Did the bumper sticker piss you off? The mediating roles of blame judgement and negative emotion between slogans and aggressive driving behaviour

Abstract

With growth in the quantity of vehicles in China, diverse bumper sticker slogans have become a common sight on roads. Bumper sticker slogans are likely to affect the responses of surrounding drivers, but little is known about the underlying mechanism involved. The aims of this study were to explore the effects of bumper sticker slogans on blame judgement, negative emotion and aggressive driving behaviour and to test the mediating roles of blame judgement and negative emotion between bumper sticker slogans and aggressive driving behaviour. We adopted a single-factor design in which bumper sticker slogans were a within-subject factor with two levels: provocative and conciliatory slogans. The participants were asked to imagine five irritating driving scenarios while viewing different slogans and to respond to items measuring other variables. Finally, a total of 233 valid questionnaires were received. The results showed that compared with conciliatory slogans, provocative slogans received higher scores for blame judgement, negative emotion and aggressive driving behaviour. Moreover, both blame judgement and negative emotion played mediating roles between bumper sticker slogans and aggressive driving behaviour, and they had a joint mediating effect, indicating that bumper sticker slogans affected aggressive driving behaviour by increasing blame judgement and negative emotion. This study explores the mechanism by which bumper sticker slogans affect aggressive driving behaviour and provides insights for the future design of bumper sticker slogans and for drivers’ selection of appropriate bumper sticker slogans.