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The study made some strong remarks about the kind of people who would modify their car’s exhaust. If psychopathy and sadism aren’t bad enough, apparently loud truck owners would do even worse.

  • A professor in Ontario, Canada, has released results of a study of people’s attitudes toward loud vehicles.
  • Having asked undergraduate business students whether they think such vehicles are “cool,” the result, not totally surprisingly, was that many of them do.
  • Respondents also scored high on the “psychopathy and sadism” scale, but the study was only for cars. Truck and motorcycle owners, the study suggests, might score even worse.

A new study by Western University in Ontario says that if you’ve got a car with a modified exhaust system, odds are you’re a guy and probably also psychotic and sadistic. Slapping a Cherry Bomb glasspack on your Monte Carlo doesn’t (necessarily) mean you’re a Ted Bundy–level psycho, but the data someone points to a personality that enjoys inflicting unpleasantness on others. The study—catchily titled, “A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism”—was commissioned by professor Julie Aitken Schermer, who heard many a loud car in London, Ontario, and wondered what kind of person would want their car exhaust to be louder than normal. She probably could have saved a lot of time by simply looking up Cadillac Escalade-V registrations. …

  • niftyEnglish
    1•23 days ago

    the present study predicted that each dark trait would positively correlate with the loud car scale aggregate, and because typically modifications to vehicles represent criminal activity, it was predicted that sadism and psychopathy would positively predict the aggregate of the car items.

    To me it seems like they’re saying “predicted” when they meant “hypothesized”.

    Here are the questions they used:

    The items were: “My car is an extension of what makes me a person”, “I think loud cars are really cool”, and “If I could, I would make my car louder with muffler modification”. Items were responded to using the following response key: 1 – strongly disagree, 2 – somewhat disagree, 3 – neither agree nor disagree, 4 – somewhat agree, or 5 – strongly agree.

    I think what’s missing from the survey design are questions which explore intent, like “I would use a loud muffler when people are sleeping”. I also think the “makes me a person” and “really cool” wording is ambiguous because the answers are not necessarily related to one’s personality. For example “makes me a person” could refer to maybe “helps me achieve survival” to someone, and “really cool” could mean anything from deep interest hobby to expressing admiration of other people’s abilities.

    The other issue is that their sample is only business students, so it’s not representative of the entire male population.

    I think maybe they released this pilot to gather initial impressions, so it makes sense to be critical and make suggestions for improvements

    Edit I think another issue is that people in general don’t understand the disposition of the loud muffler enthusiast, and the approach in this study is starting out with the assumption that the motivation is dark tetrad.