In the small town of London, Ontario (Canada), a psychology professor, Julie Aitken Schermer, has taken to walking her dog near the Western University campus where she works. But every day, his little tour is disturbed by quite annoying noises. This is due to particularly noisy cars, vans and motorbikes. His dog is panicked, the squirrels are running away, and his own eardrums are hurting.
“I said to myself: ‘But who really wants to make that kind of noise?’ As an academic, I have done extensive research“, she tells the CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster. Unfortunately, she then noticed that there was no study on the subject. Determined not to stop there, she therefore carried out one herself. Published in the journal Current Issues in Personality Psychology, this research reveals the typical profile of these fans of noisy cars. And it is clear that the result is not pretty.
Behavior linked to a particular relationship with society
To carry out this study, Julie Aitken Schermer interviewed 529 business students (including 289 men and 234 women). She asked them about their relationship with their cars, whether they liked loud or quiet cars, and gave them a personality test called Short Dark Tetrad (SD4).
First result: young men are more likely to like the shrill noise of these cars. Then, the researcher admits that she expected a correlation between fans of noisy cars and narcissism. But against all expectations, the results did not really confirm his hypothesis.
However, “We found that sadism and psychopathy best predicted who would want to modify quiet cars, who would feel more connected to their vehicle, and who would think loud cars would be really cool“, explains Julie Aitken Schermer. “It seems to have something to do with this callous disregard for other people’s feelings and reactions. It’s psychopathy that comes out of it and it’s also probably linked to the fact that they like to watch people be surprised.“.
Be careful with generalizations!
Can these results be generalized to the entire population? In other words, are all people who love noisy cars psychopathic and sadistic men? According to the academic, no. Because there are, for example, groups of enthusiasts who go to events to make their engines roar and thus express their personality. A very different setting from those who do the same in an urban environment. She also cites older men as much less likely to engage in the practice.
On the other hand, Julie Aitken Schermer warns of a more alarming correspondence. “The personality profiles I found with these noisy cars overlap with those of people who commit arson“. This is what leads her to declare that the issue of noise pollution linked to automobiles should be taken seriously. For her part, she intends to explore the subject further by embarking on another study.
