Students' Subjective Appraisals of Driving Behavior

Abstract

Students' self-enhancing beliefs about their own driving behaviors were examined as functions of the desirability, controllability, and verifiability of particular actions. The participants were 48 Dutch university students. They completed a computer-administered questionnaire in which desirability, controllability, and verifiability of particular actions were systematically manipulated. They rated the likelihood of a particular action both for themselves and for the average Dutch driver. The results partially supported the hypotheses that the participants would (a) rate undesirable actions as more probable under conditions of low verifiability and low controllability and (b) consider other people more likely than they to engage in undesirable actions. One unexpected finding was that the participants deemed undesirable actions more probable when controllability was high rather than low.