THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DRIVING-RELATED COGNITIONS AND ANXIETY IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRIVING SKILLS AND DRIVING BEHAVIORS

2022-8-12
Azık Özkan, Derya
Driving skills and driving behaviors, as being the human factors in driving, are the most studied and most influential variables of efforts to sustain a safe traffic environment. Although these factors were investigated in the literature and their relationships with different variables and each other are examined in various studies with various samples; anxiety-related factors have always been evaluated only within limited (avoidant) or clinical groups. However, anxiety, like anger, is a negative emotional state that is frequently experienced during the day, and it is in effect while directing our actions. Based on this purpose and literature findings, this study examined the relationship between driving skills and driving behaviors (aberrant and anxious) in which the mediator roles of anxious driving cognitions, and anxiety level of drivers were investigated for the first time in the literature. As a result, it has been revealed that accident-panic related and social concerns, primarily related to traffic environments, were found as mediating variables in the path to anxiety performance deficits, lapses, and errors for both perceptual-motor skills and safety skills. Concerning the mediation analyses for state and trait anxiety, the results showed the mediation effect of trait anxiety in the path toanxiety performance deficits, lapses, and errors for both perceptual-motor skills and safety skills. These results may reveal how errors and lapses made during driving are shaped by the individual's own skills evaluations and the interaction of these evaluations with anxiety-related cognition and anxiety levels. And these findings reinforce new information to better understand and control aberrant driving behaviors. This study could be a pioneering study in which individual literature findings related to driving skills, driving behaviors, driving, and general anxiety to date have been gathered, tested, and proven to be functional for the general driver population. In particular, the fact that the evaluations of individuals about their skills predict unintentional actions parallel to each other, such as anxious concerns or trait anxiety, and anxiety-performance deficits, errors, and lapses, highlights that there is a significant mechanism here.

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Citation Formats
D. Azık Özkan, “THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DRIVING-RELATED COGNITIONS AND ANXIETY IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRIVING SKILLS AND DRIVING BEHAVIORS,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2022.