Copyright: Shell Brands International AG 2008

Projects & Technology

8/29/2013

Driving as the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals

Stephen Skippon, Tom Vannozzi & James Flack

6th International Conference on Driver Behaviour & Training, Helsinki, August 2013

Self-regulation theories of driver behaviour: Risk Allostasis Theory (Fuller, 2011)

Drivers adjust their driving

behaviour to fall within a

target range of task

difficulty, experienced as

feelings of risk

Other motivational

influences have their effect

by adjusting where in the

target range the feedback

loop will operate

Example of theories based

on self-regulation of a

single variable

Range of

acceptable task

difficulty Output function

(speed and

trajectory) Input function

(perceived task

difficulty

Comparator

Impact on

environment

(task demand)

Immediate

influences on

compliance

Perceived

demand

(actual)

Perceived

demand

(anticipated)

Perceived

capability

Disposition to

comply with

the speed limit

Self-regulation theories of driver behaviour: Multiple Comfort Zone Model (Summala, 2007)

Drivers seek to keep several variables within “comfort zones”:

• Safety margin

• Good or expected progress of trip

• Rule following (avoiding violations; and conforming to social norms)

• Vehicle/road system (maintaining smooth car/road operation and

performance, etc.)

• Pleasure of driving (arising from a sense of control, and also from sensation

seeking)

There are self-regulatory processes adjusting behaviour to keep

each variable within its comfort zone

Processes are required to adjudicate between competing

behavioural demands of each self-regulatory feedback loop

Inter-goal dynamics theories of human behaviour

Behaviour is the result of the simultaneous

pursuit of multiple goals

Goals are hierarchically organised, from

broad strategies for living to specific

immediate tasks

Some goals may influence behaviour without

conscious awareness

Active goals may:

•COMPETE for control of limited

resources – especially behaviour

•CONFLICT, such that successful pursuit

of one hinders pursuit of another

•COMPLEMENT each other: the same

behaviour supports pursuit of both

People attend to those aspects of their

perceptual environments that are salient to

their most active goals

Principle Goals

Activity goals

Task goals

Goal P2

Goal A3

Goal T4Goal T3

Goal P1

Goal A2Goal A1

Goal T2Goal T1

Goal SC1 Self-Concept Goal

Goal BI1 Biological imperative

Behaviour b1 Behaviour b2 Behaviour b3 Behaviour b4 Behaviour b5 Behaviour b6 Behaviours

From moment to moment, the actor’s behaviour is

the result of a process of INTERACTIVE

ACTIVATION AND COMPETITION between her/his

active goals

Carver & Scheier, 1998; Powers, 2005; Kruglanski et al., 2002

Study 1: Goals when driving: qualitative research in UK and Malaysia

Individual interviews, dyadic interviews and group discussions

Thematic analysis to identify conceptually distinct driving goals

Life-stage UK Malaysia Total

Male Female Male Female

Young person 17 17 17 17 68

Family 14 14 13 13 54

Total 31 31 30 30 122

Goals when driving: qualitative research findings

Category Goal

Functional

Journey

Get to destination as quickly as possible

Be in control of arrival time

Keep journey costs down

Help protect the environment

Be comfortable

Relax

Use time to communicate with other people

Use time to think about other things

Avoid journey hassle/stress

Avoid penalties for driving violations

Avoid tedium while travelling by having an active task to perform

Safety

Avoid harm to myself through accident

Avoid causing harm to others

Avoid damage to my own vehicle

Avoid aggression from drivers

Symbolic

Seek approval of family & social contacts through driving style

Conform with driving style of my social groups

Signal financial/social status through driving style

Signal pro-environmental lifestyle/values through driving style

Signal my masculinity to others through driving style

Signal adulthood/maturity to others through driving style

Signal high/low Openness to others through driving style

Signal high/low Conscientiousness to others through driving style

Signal high/low Extraversion to others through driving style

Signal high/low Agreeableness to others through driving style

Signal high/low Neuroticism to others through driving style

Signal my skill at dynamic driving to others

Signal my skill at careful driving to others

Affective Have fun from driving

Study 2: Relative activation states of goals when driving

Not feasible to directly measure the activation of goals in real time:

neuro-imaging, event-related potential lack the required specificity

Need to use inferential methods

Can draw inferences by asking people to self-report the relative

importance to themselves of different goals in particular driving

situations

Study 2 measured the relative importance of different driving goals in

four driving situations, self-reported by participants in a choice

experiment

648 male & 552 female participants: all UK drivers (driving > 9500km

per year), recruited via an online panel

Study 2: choice options (each participant completed 10 choice scenarios)

Relax

Keep the cost of fuel I use as low as I can

Avoid speeding penalties

Show others I am a confident and strong person

Have fun from driving

Let others see that I’m considerate

Use the time to keep in touch with people

Get there as fast as possible

Keep myself and my passengers safe

The three options below represent three different styles of driving. Different styles help you achieve

some goals but may hinder you achieving others. Imagine you are driving to work, alone. Which of the

following driving style options would you prefer?

Study 2: Choice experiment details

•Balanced experimental design (D-efficiency = 99.55%) with negligible

correlations between goal/level attributes

•Participants randomly allocated to four groups, each briefed to imagine

driving in a different scenario:

• Driving to work, alone

• Driving for personal social reasons, such as visiting a friend or going out, and you are alone in

your car

• Driving for personal social reasons, such as visiting a friend or going out, and you have one or

more passengers in your car

• Driving on a long journey for personal reasons (i.e. not for work)

•Hierarchical Bayes analysis

•Relative importance of each goal estimated using a simulation approach:

• multi-nominal logit model calculated for each participant

• shares of preference calculated for each combination of levels of goal fulfilment

• relative importance derived from relative magnitudes of ranges of shares of preference across

the range of levels of goal fulfilment

Study 2: Results – relative importance of driving goals in different situations

Driving goal

Relative importance of goal (% relative to all)

Driving to

work

Personal/

social,

alone

Personal/

social, with

passenger

Personal,

long

journey

Average

over all

four

situations

Keep myself and my

passengers safe

17.6 19.2 19.3 19.7 18.9

Avoid speeding penalties 14.9 15.2 16.1 15.9 15.5

Keep the cost of fuel as low as

I can

14.0 13.9 15.2 14.7 14.5

Relax 11.3 10.2 10.7 11.2 10.8

Let others see that I’m

considerate

10.0 9.3 9.8 8.8 9.5

Have fun from driving 8.7 10.6 8.3 8.7 8.7

Show others I am a confident

and strong person

9.0 8.9 7.9 7.2 8.2

Get there as fast as possible 8.1 8.4 7.2 8.6 8.0

Use the time to keep in touch

with people

6.3 4.2 5.7 5.2 6.3

Study 2: methodological limitations

•Inferential process, not a direct measure of relative

activation of different goals when driving

•Participants were imagining the choice context, rather

than experiencing it

•Can be confounded by social desirability bias

•Calculating relative rather than absolute importance can

artificially reduce differences

Study 2: discussion

Functional goals to keep myself and passengers safe, avoid driving penalties,

and keep the cost of fuel as low as I can were consistently the most important

in all situations

Symbolic goals (show others I am a confident and strong individual (low

agreeableness) and let others see that I’m considerate (high agreeableness))

also important

Relative importance of goals is context-dependent:

•Long personal journey: safety goals more important, symbolic goals less important

•Commuting to work: safety goals less important, symbolic goals more important

Safety was the most important goal, but potentially conflicting goals have fun

from driving, get there as fast as possible, and show others I am a confident

and strong individual together accounted for 25.2% of overall relative

importance

Supports view that driving style is determined not just by self-regulation

around safety goals, but the result of complex inter-goal dynamics, in which

goals both complement and conflict with each other

Towards a goal-pursuit, inter-goal dynamics theory of driving behaviour

•Studies 1 and 2 suggest that driving behaviour is the result of the

simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals

•Each goal is pursued in a self-regulatory feedback loop

•Some of these goals complement each other (requiring similar

behaviours for their fulfilment)

•But some compete or conflict with one another, requiring different

behaviours for their fulfilment

•Skippon, Reed & Robbins (2013, this conference) showed that drivers change their

behaviour in response to changes in relative activation of conflicting goals

•Processes of interactive activation and competition determine the

behvioural outcome of inter-goal dynamics

Inter-goal dynamics theory of driver behaviour: open-road, single-carriageway driving

Control

headway Control speed

Symbolic

Activity goals

Accelerator

pedal position

Brake pedal

position

Clutch pedal

position Gear selection

Activity

goals

Task goals

Behaviours

Affective

Activity goal

Go

al-

sa

lie

nt

perc

ep

tio

ns

of

sta

te o

f w

orl

d

Activation signals from

higher-level goals

Functional

Safety goals Functional

journey goals

Task Goal

relating to

steering is

omitted for

simplicity

Self regulatory feedback control mechanisms for all goals

Magnitude of comparison signal

E depends on how far the goal

is from fulfilment (i.e. R – P)

R: Mental

representation of

goal state

(Reference value) Output

(Reference value for a

subordinate goal; Reference

parameter for a subordinate

behavioural representation if

goal is a task goal)

P: Perception of

state of the world

Comparison

E = R - P

S: State of the

world

D: External

events

G: slow feedback

to R

IWM: Internal

working

models

Sensing of

state of world

(vision, etc)

Determination of reference levels for task goals

Functional journey

goals

Functional safety goals CONTROL SPEED

CONTROL HEADWAY Symbolic goals

Affective goals Outputs of jth activity goal are reference values BSj and BHj for

subordinate task goals

Inputs to the task goals are combined as weighted sums RS and RH

The weights depend on the activation levels of all goals whose

outputs contribute to the summation

Activity goals

Task goals

Activation level of a goal

comparison signal

in behavioural

action feedback

loop

Net Activation

level of goal

Net excitation and

inhibition from

other goals

These inputs are

multiplied together

Excitation and

Inhibition

signals from

other goals

These inputs

are summed

together

Activation decay:

activation is gradually

lost in the absence of

new inputs

Inter-goal dynamics processes

(e.g. Kruglanski et al. (002)

Goal-pursuit

processes (e.g.

Carver &

Scheier, 1998)

Effect of manipulating relative activation levels of competing activity goals (Skippon, Reed & Robbins, 2013)

Two competing activity goals:

•Safety (avoid harm)

•Journey (complete route as

fast as possible)

Relative activation of Journey

goal is higher in “Time

Pressured” condition

IGD-Driving model predicts

reference level for speed control

task goal will be higher in Time

Pressured condition

Self-regulation of speed control

task goal to higher reference

value results in higher mean

accelerator pedal depression

0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

Relaxed Time Pressured Mea

n ac

cele

rato

r (g

as) p

edal

de

pres

sion

Goal condition

Performance oriented drivers General drivers

Conclusions

Studies 1 and 2 provide evidence that drivers pursue a

diverse range of multiple goals when driving

A theory combining self-regulatory pursuit of multiple

goals, with inter-goal dynamics, provides a framework that

reflects this

The theory includes specific mechanisms to determine the

reference levels in goal feedback loops and the relative

activation levels of the goals included

Acknowledgments

Thank you for your attention!

The authors would like to thank our participants for helping us

carry out the study

References

Carver, C.S. & Scheier, M.F. (1998). On the Self-Regulation of Behavior. Cambridge,

England: Cambridge University Press.

Fuller, R. (2011). Driver Control Theory. In B.E. Porter (Ed.), Handbook of Traffic

Psychology. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier.

Kruglanski, A.W., Shah, J.Y., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W.Y. & Sleeth-

Keppler, W. (2002). A theory of goal systems. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.) Advances in

Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 34, pp. 331-378. San Diego, CA: Academic

Press.

Powers, W.T. (2005). Behavior: the control of perception (2nd edition). New Canaan,

CT: Benchmark Publications.

Skippon, S.M., Reed, N. & Robbins, R. (2013). Effects of Driving Goals on Driving

Behaviour. 6th International Conference on Driver Behaviour and Training, Helsinki.

Summala, H. (2007). Towards Understanding Motivational and Emotional Factors in

Driver Behaviour: Comfort Through Satisficing. In P.C.Cacciabue (Ed.), Modelling

Driver Behaviour in Automotive Environments: Critical Issues in Driver Interactions

with Intelligent Transport Systems. London, England: Springer-Verlag London Ltd.