You’re a Jerk If you Drive a Fancy Car (according to science)
By darik on February 27, 2020
(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
According to science drivers of expensive cars are the worst.
A new study has found that drivers of flashy vehicles are less likely to stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road — with the likelihood they’ll slow down decreasing by 3% for every extra $1,000 that their vehicle is worth.
Researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas speculated that the expensive car owners “felt a sense of superiority over other road users”.
But the best predictor of whether a car would stop was its cost, researchers discovered. “Disengagement and a lower ability to interpret thoughts and feelings of others along with feelings of entitlement and narcissism may lead to a lack of empathy for pedestrians” among costly car owners, they theorized in the study.
And the discovery of a car-value-to-jerkish-behavior correlation isn’t new; the research, published in the Journal of Transport and Health, backed up a Finnish study published last month that found that men who own flashy vehicles are more likely to be “argumentative, stubborn, disagreeable and unempathetic.”
