Danger! Territorial Markings (6-30-08)

Watch cars with lots of bumper stickers carefully. Cars can be seen as personal territory, and Szlemko and his colleagues have determined that when cars have more territorial markers, such as bumper stickers or decals, they are more apt to be driven aggressively. As they describe, “Aggressive driving may occur when social norms for defending a primary territory (i.e., one’s automobile) become confused with less aggressive norms for defending a public territory (i.e., the road).”

William Szlemko, Jacob Benfield, Paul Bell, Jerry Deffenbacher, and Lucy Troup. 2008. “Territorial Markings as a Predictor of Driver Aggression and Road Rage.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 1664-1688.