Modeling Road Rage

One of my guilty pleasures is watching auto racing on television, an interest that traces back to my childhood, when my father took us to midget, sprint car and stock car races throughout the Northeast. Auto racing suffered a tragedy this month when Tony Stewart, three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, driving a sprint car on a dirt track in Canandaigua, NY, ran over and killed fellow-driver Kevin Ward, Jr., who was standing on the track. The incident was unusual only by virtue of its sad ending.

In racing, it's common for contact to occur when one car passes another. It doesn't always cause a accident, but when it does, it is most often the slower car that is left spinning to the side of the track. The passing driver typically denies that the accident was intentional; his victim usually has a different interpretation. It is not unusual for the victim to exhibit signs of road rage, for example, standing on the track and yelling or shaking his fist at the other driver as he passes the scene of the accident.

On the lap prior to the fatal accident, Stewart (#14) spun out Ward's (#13) car, bringing out the caution flag. The video shows what happened next.

You can hear Stewart hit the throttle just before he drives past Ward. (The video doesn't permit us to locate the source of the sound, but eyewitnesses claim it was Stewart.) Stewart may have responded to Ward's anger with some road rage of his own. On a dirt track, drivers will sometimes deliberately spray dirt onto someone standing on or near the track. However, accelerating suddenly on dirt can cause the car to fishtail, sending its rear wheels toward the outside of the track. Stewart's right rear tire struck Ward, pulled him under the vehicle, and killed him.

Stewart's actions were reckless but almost certainly not intentional. It's doubtful that he will be prosecuted, since Ward assumed a great deal of risk by walking on the track. He may, however, suffer professional consequences, especially given his long history of on-track aggression. (For example, when Stewart was taken out in an accident he attributed to fellow NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth, he threw his helmet at Kenseth's front windshield. Later he threatened Kenseth with retaliation in a television interview.) Stewart's greatest risk will be loss of corporate sponsorship and income from television commercials.

AAA reports that aggressive driving, broadly defined, is a factor in 56% of fatal auto accidents. A 2013 article by Christine Wickens and her colleagues summarizes what is known about the causes of road rage, which they define more narrowly as aggressive actions on roadways resulting from hostility toward another driver. Since little is known, the article functions as a road map for future research. They divide the causes into personal, i.e., men exhibit more road rage than women, and situational, i.e., it occurs when aggressive intent is attributed to another driver. Not mentioned among potential causes is observational learning and imitation of the behavior of role models.

NASCAR and other racing sanctioning bodies have been quite tolerant of aggressive displays on the track, probably because they think they increase the sport's popularity. But drivers like Tony Stewart are liked and respected by racing fans, and their actions might serve to legitimize similar aggressive actions on the roadways. Are changes in the popularity of auto racing on television correlated with changes in the frequency of aggression on our highways? (NASCAR's ratings have tailed off in recent years. Has road rage also declined?)

There has been relatively little research on the effects of specific events shown or reported in the mass media. An exception is research on suicide contagion, a problem which has become timely following the death of Robin Williams. Suicides increase in the country in the week following the suicides of well-known people. The effect is greater when person who commits suicide is real rather than fictional and there is evidence suggesting that contagion is more likely to occur when there is a demographic match between the model and his or her imitator. These studies could point the way for future research on the connection between televised incidents and road rage among racing fans.

The Stewart incident has brought about at least a temporary change. NASCAR has announced that drivers will not be permitted to leave their cars following an accident until they are escorted off the track by the safety crew. (Of course, there are exceptions, such as when the vehicle is on fire.) NASCAR claims that this has always been the rule, but if so, it hasn't been enforced. If this change is permanent, it could impact not only driver safety, but audience safety as well.

Now, NASCAR, what about those threats of violence in post-race interviews?

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Situation Alarming--But Not Serious

Situation Alarming--But Not Serious

It's sometimes said that liberals are concerned about violence in the mass media but not sexuality, while conservatives are concerned about sexuality but not violence. If so, then a new study by social psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues suggests that the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) rating system is a system of conservatives, by conservatives, and for conservatives.

The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 to solve a financial problem for the film industry: Too many popular films were being rated R, and an R rating meant that children under 17 could not attend unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. According to the MPAA, a PG-13 film “may go beyong the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, adult activities or other elements, but does not reach the restricted R category.” With respect to violence, they say, “There may be depictions of violence in a PG-13 movie, but generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence.” So, how's it going?

First, the methodology. Bushman drew up a list of the 30 top-grossing films of each year from 1950 to 2012 (1890 films), from which they randomly selected half, or 945 films. Trained coders watched the films and identified violent sequences, defined as “physical acts where the aggressor makes or attempts to make some physical contact with the intention of causing injury or death.” This definition excludes natural disasters, accidents and sports injuries. A sequence refers to the continuous action of a character, regardless of the number of discrete acts in the sequence. This solves an important practical problem, because it is not necessary to count the exact number of violent acts, i.e., punches, gunshots, which is a major source of unreliability in measuring violence. Using this approach, they achieved a reliability of α = .80, which is pretty good.

(I have very few questions about this approach, but one problem that concerns me is the scoring of scenes with large numbers of participants, such as battle scenes. Since there is one violent sequence for each character, how do you measure the number of participants? And how do you prevent such scenes from skewing the data?)

Next, they divided the films into 5-minute segments. The number of violent sequences in each segment was counted, and each film was given a score representing the rate of violent sequences per hour. In case you're wondering, 94% of all films between 1950 and 2012 had at least one violent sequence.

Bushman also counted the number of sequences involving guns, a gun being defined as “a weapon that can be carried with one or both hands that fires a bullet or energy beam with the intention of harming or killing a living target.” Hunting and target shooting were excluded. The reliability in scoring these sequences was even better (α = .91). A violent scene involving a weapon is less ambiguous than other forms of violence.

For purposes of analysis, films after 1984 were divided by rating into three categories: G and PG, PG-13 and R. G and PG were combined because there were fewer films with these ratings among the box office hits.

First, Bushman looked at the overall trend from 1950 to 2012. Not surprisingly, there was an increase. The level of violence more than doubled. The rate of increase was not simply linear, but gradually accelerated over the 63-year period.

Then they looked at gun violence during the period from 1984 to the present. Again, there was an increase, but there were important differences by rating. The G- and PG-rated films averaged 1.26 gun sequences per hour, and the overall rate declined slightly. The R-rated films averaged 2.15 sequences per hour and the rate did not change. However, violence in PG-13 films increased significantly, more than tripling over the 29 years. It started at near-zero, but accelerated sharply in recent years. From 2009-2012 the rate of gun violence was higher in PG-13-rated films than in R-rated films, flatly contradicting the MPAA guidelines.

The study does not report any measures of nudity or sexuality in films, but one of the co-authors, Daniel Romer, said that they measured sexuality, and it is much more likely to get an R rating than violence. I presume these results will appear in a future publication.

The relationship between filmed and televised violence and aggressive behavior is one of the strongest findings in social science, replicated in hundreds of experimental and correlational studies. The American Psychological Association and several other professional organizations have issued position papers highlighting these findings and recommending public policy changes. When you statistically combine the results of these studies in a meta-analysis, the relationship between filmed violence and aggressive behavior turns out to be almost as strong as that between smoking and lung cancer, and higher than many other statistical relationships that society takes very seriously, i.e., exposure to lead and IQ, homework and academic achievement. Exposure to media violence also makes participants less likely to help a person in need.

Daniel Craig as the PG-13-rated James Bond

Gun violence is a particular concern due to the weapons effect. Experiments show that the mere presence of a weapon—or a picture of a weapon—in the environment increases aggressive behavior in both angry and non-angry participants, which is probably why the presence of a gun in the home increases homicides.

While preparing this blog entry, I read at least a dozen reports about Bushman's study in the corporate media. Sadly, most of them contained false balancing (such as this one and this one). That is, they “balanced” Bushman's findings with comments from skeptics who dismissed the idea that violence in films might influence real-world aggressive behavior. (Science Daily was a notable exception.) The most common argument was that homicides have declined in this country in recent years, even as filmed violence has increased. This reasoning is, of course, completely fallacious, since there are many other variables that influence the homicide rate.

False balancing creates the mistaken impression that “experts disagree” over whether gun violence in movies really matters. Considering the popularity of violent films and television shows, this may be exactly what their audience wants to hear. Bushman has recently written an article suggesting several ways people rationalize away these findings. It is also worth noting that most of these news organizations are owned by larger media corporations that profit from the sale of filmed and televised violence. Bushman and Anderson have found that as the findings linking media violence and agression have gotten stronger, the news media have become more assertive in dismissing them.

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Open Carry

Breathing While Black

The Job Killers, Part 1

Open Carry

Last week, in connection of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, I posted research showing that people are more likely to “see” a gun in the hands of a African-American man than a white man, even when that black man is carrying a harmless object such as a cell phone. Now I've found a new series of studies that suggest that carrying a gun also increases the likelihood that you will see a similar weapon in the hands of others.

Photo by itwuzcryptic

In a soon-to-be-published paper, Jessica Witt and James Brockmole of Notre Dame University report five studies in which they asked student participants to look at slides of men carrying either guns or harmless objects. The students had about a half-second to indicate whether the person was armed or not by raising or lowering a lever. The experiment varied the handle of that lever. In one condition, it was shaped like a realistic-looking toy handgun. It the other, it was a rubber ball. The results showed that the participants were more likely to “see” the person in the slide as holding a gun when they themselves were holding a gun than when they were holding a ball.

The authors interpret these findings as consistent with the theory of event coding. This theory is a scientific variation on the old saying that when you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When planning an action with an object or tool, you are predisposed to identify other objects on which the tool might be used.

The authors also considered the theory of conceptual priming. This theory suggests that the mere presence of a weapon in the environment predisposes people to “see” other weapons. They rule this explanation out due to one of their five experiments. In this variation, a real firearm was placed on the table while the subjects were performing the task using the lever with the rubber ball handle. There was no greater tendency to see the man in the slide as holding a firearm when a real gun was present in their environment than when it was not.

I suspect that they ruled out the priming explanation prematurely. First of all, there are other studies showing that aggressive cues in the environment affect behavior. For example, in a study by Berkowitz and LePage, frustrated participants were more likely to respond aggressively when there were weapons (a handgun and a rifle) on the table than when there was either a neutral object (a badminton racquet) or nothing on the table. Secondly, in the Witt and Brockmole study, participants were exposed to many photos of handguns, and guns were referred to when explaining the task. It's possible that in such a gun-saturated environment, the presence of yet another gun—albeit a real one—didn't make much difference.

I go into these details not only because I believe in priming—an effect supported by literally thousands of studies. It also affects the practical implications of Witt and Brockmole studies. A strict interpretation of them would state that the bias to “see” a gun occurs only when you are holding a gun in your hand.

In this country, all but eight states permit ordinary people to openly carry a firearm either on their person or in their car (although some of them require a license), and all but Illinois (and D. C.) allow people to carry concealed weapons. This research implies that carrying a firearm makes you more likely to see others as dangerous. Does it matter whether you are carrying the gun in your hand, in a holster, or in the glove compartment of your car? Probably. You are more likely to be aware of the gun when it's in your hand (as Zimmerman's apparently was). But I suspect that carrying a concealed weapon alters threat perception as well. Maybe future studies will test the limits of this effect.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Does anyone remember those Looney Tunes in which Bugs Bunny is fleeing from a speeding bullet, and every time he zig-zags, the bullet changes direction along with him? Well, Sandia National Laboratories, a division of Lockheed Martin, has announced the successful development of a rifle for use by the military that fires self-guided bullets. In theory, these weapons could hit a laser-designated target from very long distances. Just point and shoot. The bullet does all the work. Sandia's motto on their website is “securing a peaceful and free world through technology."

Photo by www.defenceimages.mod.uk

The bullet works on the same principle as a smart bomb. An optical sensor in the nose of the bullet detects a laser beam on the target and sends feedback to a control system, also built into the bullet. The bullet flies straighter than usual because it lacks the spin caused by the uneven surface which keeps a normal bullet from hitting its target. It has a smooth surface and fins to prevent it from spinning. According to Sandia, a typical bullet misses a target one-half mile away by 9.8 yards, while this bullet only misses by 8 inches.

The key to near perfect accuracy is “painting” the target with a laser beam. I presume the laser is built into the scope of the rifle. The shooter will only have to keep the laser on the target until the bullet arrives. However, this limits the range of the weapon. An alternative would be a two-person operation, with one person spotlighting the target with a laser while the other fires the weapon. In theory, this would allow the shooter to hit the target from an even greater distance and may not require a direct line of sight to the target.

Doesn't this begin to sound like a political assassin's wet dream?

Stanley Milgram and other social psychologists who have found that anything that decreases salience of a helpless victim increases willingness to harm that victim. The physical distance between an aggressor and his target is one factor determining salience. It's much easier to kill someone from a distance of half a mile than from three feet, where you have to see, hear and smell his death.

Here's a cheerful video from a fellow who doesn't see any downside to this weapon:

Sandia's press release says, “Potential customers for the bullet include the military, law enforcement and recreational shooters.” (That's funny. The reporter on the video said that too. I guess plagiarizing from a corporate press release is much easier than writing your own copy. And they don't seem to mind at all!) The only impediment would seem to be the cost. Of course, cost is no problem for the U. S. military, but every police force in the country will want to have them as well. Not to worry. I'm sure most communities will be willing to lay off a public school teacher or two in order to accomodate them. As these weapons become more common, how long will it be before they start to disappear from the supply room?

Certainly, many hunters will want to have one in order to add a few extra inches to their manhood. But it seems to me that self-guided bullets are the hunter's equivalent of “fishing” by throwing a stick of dynamite into a pond and picking up the dead fish as they float to the surface. They're just not very sporting.

What's to keep every moron in the country from owning one of these toys? The National Rifle Association will surely insist that anyone who can legally buy a gun can has a right to have one that fires self-guided bullets. After all, they are needed in order to protect ourselves from our neighbors, who we suspect are also planning to purchase one of these weapons.

Price may turn out not be a problem. Sandia says these weapons “can be developed inexpensively and rapidly.” You and I have already paid for the R&D. There are big bucks to be made by pricing them to sell. Public subsidies followed by private profits. This is the corporate welfare state as it's intended to function. 

If one of these rifles and six bullets winds up costing less than a laptop computer, I'm going to be worried.