Any commuter in the D.C. region encounters countless bumper stickers — most probably never even register with other drivers.
However, a new study shows that political bumper stickers could be making traffic more dangerous, and turning normally-safe drivers into aggressive ones.
The study, “How do drivers react to partisan bumper stickers? Understanding polarization in apolitical settings,” was published in Frontiers in Political Science, and showed that viewing a sticker can lead to different driving behavior.
Participants were asked to watch computer-generated dashcam video of an orange car in front of them. Some cars had no bumper stickers, others had a non-partisan “I Love My Dog” sticker, and others had a “Proud Democrat” or “Proud Republican” sticker.
When the car in front of the participant drove smoothly, the bumper sticker didn’t matter.
However, when the car in front drove badly, swerving into the participant’s lane, there was far more horn honking if the participant opposed the partisan sticker on the swerving vehicle.
According to the researchers, the hostile reaction is potentially harmful when added to the already stress-filled activity of driving.
“Partisan bumper stickers, whilst innocuous when things are going well, have the potential to trigger dangerous hostility when things are going badly,” researchers wrote in the study.
As for why people put bumper stickers on their car? Researchers said identity expression appeals to many drivers who value the chance to express themselves in public.
“Displaying a bumper sticker brings the driver and the vehicle closer together, asserting the driver’s claim to share the positive symbolic attributes of the vehicle, and simultaneously making the vehicle less anonymous and more a projection of the driver’s image,” according to researchers Rachel Suzanne Torres and Benjamin David Farrer, with the School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Cincinnati.
The authors said future study could introduce more variables: “Democrats might react very differently to being cut off by a Toyota Prius hybrid with a “coexist” bumper sticker, versus by a Ford F-150 or a Cybertruck with a Confederate flag decal.”
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