SOCIAL-STATUS AND AGGRESSION - A FIELD-STUDY ANALYZED BY SURVIVAL ANALYSIS

A field experiment was conducted in Germany to explore whether driver characteristics and the social status of cars are related to an aggres sive response. Drivers waiting at a traffic light (N=57) were blocked by an experimental car. The amount of time that elapsed until the driv ers responded by honking their horns or beaming their headlights was r ecorded, and bivariate and multivariate methods of survival analysis w ere used to analyze the data. The status of the blocked cars was posit ively correlated with the tendency toward an aggressive response.