Changing Driver Behavior Through Unconscious Stereotype Activation

How can we encourage people to drive more safely? Risk homeostasis theory (Wilde, 1988) suggests that when a driver is aware of a safety intervention it may be limited in its effectiveness because behavior may be altered to maintain a constant level of risk. Can we change driver behavior without the driver’s awareness? Under the guise of evaluating a head-up display in a driving simulator, participants completed scrambled sentence tasks (while waiting at stop signs) designed to prime either an elderly or teenage stereotype. Driving speeds between stop signs in the Stereotype conditions were compared to Control conditions in which age non-specific words were substituted for stereotyped words. Participants had a lower maximum speed in the Elderly Stereotype condition and a higher maximum speed in the Teenage condition (as compared to controls). These effects were obtained even though the participants were completely unaware of the themes in the experimental conditions. For both stereotypes, the change in behavior occurred relatively quickly: a significant effect on driving speed was observed after only five stops. These findings indicate that it may be possible to reduce the incidence of dangerous driving behavior through the use of unconscious priming.