From anxiety to aggression: An investigation into the roles of antisocial traits and self-regulatory dysfunction in road behaviours

Research has shown that aggressive driving behaviours (ADBs) are often initiated via emotional impulses. However, little research to date has explored how feelings of anxiety may translate to aggression on the road. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the links between anxiety and ADB, and to explore the moderating influences that antisocial (psychopathic) traits, anger rumination, and emotion dysregulation hold toward this relationship. To achieve this, a sample of adult Australian drivers (N = 386; 61 % women; M^age = 50 years) completed an online survey battery. A MANOVA revealed that driving anxiety, anger rumination, emotion dysregulation, antisocial traits, and ADBs significantly differed between groups categorised by mild, moderate, and severe generalised anxiety; with higher scores largely being tied to more severe anxiety. Next, correlational analysis indicated that there were significant positive associations between anxiety (generalised and driving-related), anger rumination, antisocial traits, driving anger, and various ADBs. Finally, moderation analyses suggested that driving anxiety influenced ADBs in unique ways, depending on the context of participants’ anger rumination, emotion dysregulation, and antisocial traits. Specifically, conditional effects showed that where driving anxiety negatively predicted ADB after accounting for anger rumination at low levels, it was found to positively predict ADB when emotion dysregulation was high and antisocial traits were moderate or high. The findings of this study provide a greater understanding of how driving anxiety may manifest into aberrant and emotion-directed behaviours when driving on the road. Such findings could inform future road safety research and practice about the potential roles that self-regulatory factors play in understanding and intervening on ADB.