A recent pilot study published in Current Issues in Personality Psychology has found connections between dark personality traits and the desire for loud cars. The findings indicate that young men scoring high in traits such as psychopathy and everyday sadism were more likely to express a desire for loud vehicles, including willingness to modify their cars to enhance the noise. These findings provide a new lens through which to understand the motivations behind certain illegal vehicle modifications.
The study was motivated by a gap in existing research on the subject and personal observations of the disruptive nature of such vehicles. The study’s author, Julie Aitken Schermer, hypothesized that dark personality traits, known collectively as the dark tetrad, would correlate with this behavior. The dark tetrad includes Machiavellianism (strategic manipulation), narcissism (exaggerated self-importance), psychopathy (impulsive cruelty), and everyday sadism (enjoyment of others’ suffering).
“The great thing about being an academic is that if you are curious about something, you can research the topic,” said Schermer, a professor at the University of Western Ontario. “I walk to the university from home and I am regularly startled by loud cars with modified mufflers backfiring and scaring me, other pedestrians, other drivers, and animals in the area.”
“I was really curious as to who wanted to drive these types of cars, especially because the modifications are technically illegal. After doing an extensive search, I could not find any past studies, so conducted a study to assess what may be the predictive personality dimensions for this behavior.”
The study involved 529 undergraduate business students, comprising 289 men, 234 women, and 6 individuals identifying as other. The average age was 18.14 years, ranging from 16 to 37 years. Participation involved completing an online survey, with students receiving partial course credit for their involvement.
The survey included three custom questions designed to gauge participants’ attitudes towards loud cars with modified mufflers:
- “My car is an extension of what makes me a person.”
- “I think loud cars are really cool.”
- “If I could, I would make my car louder with muffler modification.”
Participants responded using a five-point scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” The average score was 6.53 out of a possible 15, indicating a generally low, but varied, interest in loud cars.
The study found significant positive correlations between all dark tetrad traits and the desire for loud cars. However, when predicting this desire using a regression model, only psychopathy and everyday sadism emerged as significant predictors. Men were also more likely to express a preference for loud cars compared to women.
“Based on responses from younger university students, those who scored higher on self-report psychopathy and everyday sadism also reported that they thought loud cars were cool, felt a connection with their car, and would modify their mufflers to make their car louder,” Schermer told PsyPost. “What the personality dimensions suggest is that these individuals have a callous disregard for others (indicative of psychopathy) and may even take pleasure in upsetting people (indicative of sadism).”
Interestingly, while narcissism was expected to predict the desire for loud cars due to its association with attention-seeking behavior, it did not significantly influence the results. This suggests that the motivations behind wanting a loud car might be more related to a lack of empathy and a pleasure in causing disruption, rather than a mere need for attention.
“I had initially thought that narcissism would be a significant predictor of who wanted to drive a loud vehicle as I thought that the drivers were trying to get others to look at them, but surprisingly, narcissism was not a significant predictor in this study sample,” Schermer said.
These findings align with previous research indicating that dark personality traits are associated with antisocial and criminal behaviors. The study provides new insights into how these traits manifest in everyday behaviors, such as modifying vehicles to be louder, which can disturb and inconvenience others.
But the study, like all research, includes caveats. The sample consisted primarily of young undergraduate students, which may not be representative of the broader population. The custom car interest scale, although useful, was not validated beyond this pilot study, and the focus was solely on cars, excluding other loud vehicles like motorcycles or trucks.
“This study appears to have been the first conducted on this topic and requires replication (which we are doing now),” Schermer explained. “The participants are younger adults as those are the individuals who typically own and use these types of modified muffler vehicles. This demographic is not the classic car collector type who will utilize their vehicle for charitable events, etc.”
“In the future, we are extending the project to include loud motorcycles, pick-up trucks, and to assess if there is a distinction between those who drive a loud vehicle because of muffler modifications versus those who drive with loud music playing.”
“It should be noted that the personality profile associated with muffler modifications is not a one-to-one association,” Schermer noted. “There may be additional variables which will also predict muffler modifications and possibly contextual issues such as friendship groups. Until additional research is conducted, no definitive conclusions can be made.”