Kicking. Squealing.
A recent online survey conducted by Careerbuilder has been snaking its way through various media channels. Here’s the key finding which has been relayed from Fox News, CBS, etc. and all the way up to Drudge:
Women were more apt to feel road age – 61 percent compared to 56 percent of men. In terms of age groups, workers ages 25 to 34 were the most likely to experience road at 68 percent while workers 55 and older were the least likely to experience it at 47 percent.
61% versus 56%. Here’s Fox News’ in-house psychiatrist comments in a Fox News piece:
Psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow suggests that a possible reason for the split between the sexes is that “women may be less in touch overtly with their aggression and, therefore, more vulnerable to it being tapped by circumstances on the road.” He adds that the feeling of anonymity people get behind the wheel may lead them to lower their inhibitions and allow them to stray from their otherwise polite or nurturing nature. (emphasis mine)
We’re talking a 5% split on an online (read: unscientific) survey and Ablow gets called in to explain it as a socio-psychological phenomenon.
Regardless of what constitutes a surprising enough split, we should think a bit more about what else is implicit in this survey. What is not controlled for. The survey simply asks men and women if they “feel road rage”. This is a relative term. What one person considers road rage another person may not. And I’d argue that men may tend to underestimate if and when they experience road rage. Women, on the other hand, being more foreign to outward displays of aggression as Ablow points out, have a less rigorous definition of road rage.
At the same time that I criticize this study I admit that I may be extrapolating based upon just how fucking pissed I, a man, get when driving and how clueless and unaffected by idiot drivers my girlfriend (or mom or any other woman I’ve ever ridden in a car with) is when driving. Other research has been conducted on road rage and rage in particular and found that men experience this much more than women – which is what we’d expect. This isn’t to brag that men are aggressive street buffoons. I’d just like to shoot down a claim being kicked around as mindlessly as a hacky-sack at Woodstock II.
I remember some years ago reading an article about a study of women and anger, I’m pretty sure I still have the article somewhere. It also claimed that women repress anger from social and work interactions which then comes out in other settings. But it wasn’t anonymously (though I don’t doubt that happens), it was at their significant others. That fit my experience watching my mom and dad, though fortunately a lot less so with my own SO.
Andrew Sullivan’s essay about testosterone is very good and pretty germane to this post.
He was taking testosterone injections to treat his HIV, and he details the dramatic physical effects that sudden surges of it can have on the body. There was one incident at a dog park where he lost his temper and went off on a guy who confronted him for smacking his dog. He didn’t even realize until a half hour later that he was being a jerk.
As Roissy would say, biomechanics is god.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/02/magazine/the-he-hormone.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
It is the intersection of two horrible forces– women being inherently being horrible drivers, and and being conditioned (and probably innate) to blame all problems on others.
Maybe this is just evidence that women are just more aware of their feelings. Makes you wonder about the supposed findings that women are more depressed than men. In both cases, my lying eyes tell me that men are both way angrier and more depressed than women, but the surveys don’t reflect that for some reason.
My 2 cents.. a car is,if misused, a potential weapon. women have in the past shown that when there is a good chance that they will not suffer immediate and direct consequences for their actions they wont hesitate to use a weapon against someone they feel has aggrieved them, no matter how slight the offense. In addition to the willingness to attack from relative safety, Women, for all the talk of “male privilege” are some of the most self entitled people you can come across. Combining those two with the feeling of anonymity, of being “invisible” inside a car, you get a perfect recipe for road rage. Its got nothing to do with hormones or being in touch (or not), with your feelings. its got everything to do with narcissism and the power that a car has to smite ones enemies. Don’t you guys recall stories where the woman used her car to crush her ex? ?One comes to mind were she ran over the guy a few times with daughter in the car, another where the woman crushed a man against a brick wall.
I’m not suggesting that Men aren’t as likely to do theses things too, just saying that women are just as likely to do it.
A weapon a person cannot defend against is the perfect vehicle for a woman’s style of anger and revenge. (pun intended)
Women feel it, men do it.
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