Implicit evaluations about driving skills predicting driving performance

Abstract

Self-reported measures of driving skills have the potential shortcomings of the general self-report methodology such as social responding and self-enhancement biases. In the present study, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) procedure was adapted to measure the implicit evaluations of driving skills. The performance of IAT and an explicit, self-report measure of driving skills were compared in predicting driver behaviors and performance. Ninety-one Turkish male drivers participated in the study. The results showed that the implicit test and the self-reported driving skills scale showed different patterns of relationships with the outcome measures in the regression analyses. In addition, the implicit measure of driving skills moderated the relationship between self-reported driving skills and some of the outcome measures used in the current study. These results support the need to use the implicit measures in addition to self-report measures to better understand drivers evaluations of their driving skills, which has the potential to influence their risky driving.