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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

Psychosocial approach of gender identity effects on declared risky behaviours as driver and in other domains among young driver

To what extent do gender roles and gender identity influence the risk-taking behaviour of young drivers? Such is the guiding thread of this thesis, in which we will take a psychosocial approach to the subject of gender differences. The objective is to study the link between gender identity and risk-taking behaviour by following a multidimensional approach. We will also test the partial mediator effect of risk and the perceived benefits of the aforementioned link, compare the effects of gender identity on driving (a masculine domain) with various other domains, and finally, test the causality between gender identity and risk-taking behaviour. The work is laid out in three main sections. The first section focuses on the validation of measurement tools and the activation of gender identity. Our first study (study 1) validates the French, adult version of a tool which measures multiple facets of gender identity. Three other studies (studies 2-4) were carried out in order to validate a gender identity activation method. The results underline the difficulty of activating gender identity, due to the complexity of gender as a social category. The second section focuses, firstly, on the validation of tools designed to measure driver risk-taking behaviour, risk perception and its benefits in various fields, and secondly, on the link between gender stereotype conformity and the aforementioned variables in a broad range of subjects. The first study contained in this section (study 5), enabled us to validate a new version of the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (Reason et al., 1990) in a large population of French subjects. The results also shed light on the link between masculinity and femininity (in terms of character traits and behaviour) and risky driver behaviour in a broad range of male and female subjects. Generally speaking, masculinity tends to reinforce risky driving behaviour, whereas femininity tends to inhibit it. A number of differences between gender groups and types of behaviour were brought to light. The second study in this section (study 6) allowed us to validate the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking scale (Weber et al., 2002) in a large population of French subjects. The results also revealed that masculinity tends to predict risk-taking and perceived benefits, while femininity tends to predict risk perception. The link between masculinity and the overall level of risk-taking can be partly explained by the tendency of masculine individuals to perceive benefits, while the tendency of feminine subjects to take more risks in the social domain can be explained by their tendency to associate it with a lower perceived risk. However, the study emphasizes a difference in the effects of masculinity and femininity according to the domain and gender, and some effects are only visible in women. The third section of this thesis (study 7) aims to test the effect of gender identity (in the multi-dimensional sense, i.e., conformity to gender stereotypes and identification to one's gender group) on declared risk-taking behaviour and risk perception among young drivers. In this study the effects of gender identity on driving and on various other fields are compared. The causality between gender identity and risk-taking behaviour is tested by means of an experimental approach focusing on activating social gender identity. The results show a link between gender identity and risk-taking and perception, which varies according to the domain and gender. While the level of identification of men and women to their gender group has no direct influence on their risk-taking behaviour, it appears to moderate the link between masculinity and risk-taking behaviour in men whose social gender identity has been activated. Furthermore, the level of identification of men and women to their group moderates the effect of masculinity on risk perception, in different ways, and the level of identification of women seems to inhibit the perceived risk of risky driving. However, it appears that the link between gender identity and risk-taking cannot be explained by risk perception. The results leave us unable to ascertain the existence of a stronger effect of gender identity on driving behaviour. They also impede the highlighting of a causality effect between gender identity and risky behaviour among young drivers, as gender differences and the effects of gender identity saw no increase when social gender identity was activated. The various results and limits of the work produced in this thesis will be discussed. This work demonstrates the importance of a psychosocial approach in understanding gender differences and differences within a gender group in risk-taking behaviour. It also underlines the importance of adopting an integrative approach which takes into account not only biological variables and evolutionist explanations, but also psychosocial variables such as gender roles.

Language

  • French

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Pagination: 684p.

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01688927
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Institut Francais des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Amenagement et des Reseaux (IFSTTAR)
  • Files: ITRD
  • Created Date: Dec 18 2018 10:19AM