Research shows that people who like loud cars are 'psychopaths or sadists'
Many people have probably been annoyed by the noise of modified mufflers or the roar of large motorcycle engines in their neighborhood. Psychological research has confirmed that people who aspire to own such vehicles are likely to have personality problems.
A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism
Who Wants a Loud Car? | Psychology Today Canada
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/human-individual-differences/202305/who-wants-a-loud-car
Who likes loud cars? Ontario study suggests they skew young, male and score high on psychopathy and sadism | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/loud-car-study-psychology-1.7177688
Study Links Preference For Loud Cars to Some Unsurprising Personality Traits: ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/study-links-preference-for-loud-cars-to-some-unsurprising-personality-traits
In the study, Julie Aitken-Scharmer, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, asked 529 business students whether they wanted a noisy car and compared their personality traits. The participants' average age was 18.14 years old, and there were 289 men, 234 women, and 6 other genders.
This research was initiated when Mr. Shermer, who was walking his dog, encountered a noisy car and wondered why people wanted to make so much noise. However, even when Mr. Shermer looked through the literature as an expert, he could not find the answer to his question. 'Some people customize their mufflers and exhaust systems to make them louder, but these modifications are a nuisance to people and animals and are usually illegal, so it's an interesting research topic to understand what kind of people want to make noise from their cars,' said Shermer.
At the start of the study, Scharmer conducted a survey in which participants were shown three statements: 'My car is an extension of what makes me who I am,' 'I think loud cars are really cool,' and 'If I could, I'd modify my car's muffler to make it louder.' They were asked to rate how much they agreed with each statement on a scale of 1 to 5.
Participants also answered 28 questions assessing their own personality traits. In psychology, the three personality traits of
In the tests, participants were told to reword Machiavellianism as 'cunning,' narcissism as 'special,' psychopathy as 'wild,' and sadism as 'mean.'
Analyses comparing participants' car preferences with their personality showed that men who scored high on both psychopathy and sadism tended to prefer noisy cars. Specifically, being male and possessing sadistic and psychopathic personality traits accounted for 29% of the variance in car preferences. However, there was no association between Machiavellianism or narcissism and car preferences.
The results of the analysis, which showed that people who like louder cars have worse personalities, were largely in line with Shermer's hypothesis, but he was surprised that there was no relationship between narcissism and car noise, because it was expected that narcissists might try to draw attention to themselves by making loud noises.
It should be noted that this study was biased in that the participants were all young people enrolled in the same department at the same university, so it is not clear whether the results can be applied to other groups.
'This study is disturbing because it suggests that people who drive loudly may do so intentionally to annoy others and may even be an end in itself,' said Scharmer. 'This is a pilot study and needs to be replicated in further studies before any conclusions can be drawn, but the results are particularly worrying given reports that an increasing number of cars are having loud exhaust systems.'
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