Psychology is simply the study behaviours and the way peoples mind function. Psychology tries to understand the relationship that exists between mental activities, an individual’s behaviour and what motivates a person’s action to behave in a certain way (Westen, Kowalski and Burton 2006). There are several perspectives or rather; approaches to understanding psychology and in this essay two of them will be emphasized as they will try to explain reasons for people to have road rage. Road rage is a behaviour that is very common among people especially drivers and includes behaviour such as people making threats to other drivers or people, dangerous driving, verbal insults and gestures that are very rude. Road rage is dangerous as it results to bad outcomes such as accidents, fights, assaults, and even injuries or even death in case of accidents. In addition to this, road rage has often been considered as a mental condition but has not been officiated, its cause as a mental condition has not been established yet, and that lives it to psychological aspects to provide explanations to its cause (Galovski 2004).
As stated above psychology as a field of study has several perspectives or approaches that explain how mental processes take place and the way they influence behaviour. Some of these approaches include; neuroscience perspective, behavioural perspective, cognitive, humanistic perspective and lastly psychodynamic among others. In this essay, two of these perspectives will dwell upon to explain causes of road rage. These two will be behavioural perspective and cognitive perspective.
In behavioural perspective, people’s behaviour or responses are considered the result of the environment or stimuli they live in or which surround them. This perspective explains behaviour in two main aspects that are, behaviour because of learning through contact or association and the other being the aspect of learning from the consequences of a particular behaviour (Squires 2001). This perspective emphasizes that a person’s environment can explain their actions as well as thoughts. It mainly deals with what drives people’s motivations, ones that are unknown, therefore, have to be learnt and those that are already known. They then form what is called the drive theory. This theory explains that human beings and animals have psychological requirements and needs that they have to possess in order to survive and maintain a balanced state. Change in the balanced state, causes arousal that is called primary drive or unlearned drive. Reducing this drive tries to bring back the balance. This explanation means that psychological needs lead to the development of certain drives and an organism has to reduce these drives or even eliminate them. In addition to this, existence of drives leads to learning a process that causes an experience, and these drives become secondary or learned drives. These drives can be learned through contact, association in what is referred to as classical conditioning or can be learned through consequences resulting from particular actions, and this is referred to as operant conditioning. All these are internal factors that cause motivation for particular behaviour (Squires 2001). However, other factors cause motivation for actions and are external in nature, so humans and other animals get to value them and acquire them. These factors are referred to as incentive motivation and are pull factors that humans willingly learn unlike drives that are push factors. These pull factors have value and so they always enhance and strengthen the response.
The other psychological perspective that tries to explain the cause for certain behaviour is the cognitive perspective. This perspective explains that a behaviour is usually associated with people’s perceptions, their thoughts and what they value as meaningful. This has been used by psychologists to change the way people behave by changing what they thinks and their perception about other things. This perspective dwells on mental aspects such as memory, language use, thinking and belief systems people have as causes for actions and certain behaviour and this perspective tries to explain what causes mental illnesses, as they influence these brain functions (Fischler 2001). Cognitive psychology mainly deals with how humans acquire information, processes this information and the way this information results to certain behaviours and responses, meaning that it explains the relationship between stimuli and the response because of that stimuli (Coxon 2012). This cognitive perspective is scientific in nature, and therefore scientists test it in labs to study human behaviour. Cognitive perspective is more superior than other perspective because of its scientific nature, the fact that experimental procedures keep improving all the time, therefore, increasing quality and ease of getting results and also people became dissatisfied with behavioural perspective therefore depended on cognitive. Another reason is that its link with learning about mental illnesses made develop further. The other reason for the dominance of a cognitive approach is the development of computers that provided psychologist a better chance to investigate the human brain functions by trying to compare it with a computer’s functions as it was simpler and very easy to understand, unlike the brain that is very complex (Coxon 2012).
These two perspectives are instrumental in the explanation why people have road rage. Road rage is action or behaviour that is exhibited by motorist during their interactions with other motorists and other people. Behavioural approach would explain reasons for bouts of rage by the way people are reluctant to respond to car hoots and the outburst are, because of drives (Galovski 2004). In this case, the drive is the need to move. People find hoots noisy, annoying and very much rude. For this reason, people who are hooted at respond by not responding at all and this trend has been so for a long time. The one’s hooting also find it arrogant and so respond by raging out using harsh gestures, verbal insults and even dangerous driving. As a result of external environment, people develop certain behaviours through both classical conditioning and operant conditioning (Galovski 2004).
As for cognitive approach people’s behaviour is investigated through analysing people’s views, what they think and the language they use among others. It usually involves internal aspects involving the mind. Another thing to note is that road rage has been considered a mental condition by some specialist; therefore, cognitive approach is ideal for explaining the cause of such behaviour since it’s associated with the way people think and is closely linked with the study of mental illnesses. Cognitive perspective also explains such behaviour where, people’s view of traffic bullying and people, taking advantage of each other (Coxon 2012). The only way to make a statement and having things your way is by using force and aggressiveness, and that explains the rage as they perceive this as the only way other motorists may respond. Another reason is the perception that another motorist may take for granted certain behaviours such as getting away with overlapping and stealing parking space in parking lots and for these reasons, the only way to make things clear is by using rage and outbursts (Fischler 2001).
Psychology is, therefore, an important study that explains human behaviour and helps in solving problems. It tries to explain people’s mental activities and relate them to their actions and behaviours as well as explain the motivations that people get to act in a certain way or behave in a particular manner (Westen, Kowalski and Burton 2006). It is usually associated with various approaches that further explain human behaviours and the common ones include neuroscience, humanistic, cognitive, behavioural and psychodynamic perspectives. This essay mainly deals with two perspectives that are behavioural and cognitive and have helped explain behaviours exhibited by motorist as they have road rage. For behavioural approach, people’s behaviours are, as a result, of their environments and that they learn through association and contact or through consequences of certain actions. They are categorised into drives and incentives with drives being push factors that people have, as a result, of force and incentives as pull factors for which willingly acquire. As for the cognitive approach, people’s behaviour is explained by the mind-sets, the ways they think as well as their language use (Fischler 2001). Cognitive approach is usually internal, and scientists use it to try to understand mental processes and even explain causes for mental illnesses. It is a scientific process and, therefore, is superior to behavioural perspective by the fact that it can be experimented in labs (Coxon 2012). These two perspective, have used in the essay to explain reasons for road rage and aggressive behaviours associated with it.
References
Coxon, M. (2012). Cognitive psychology. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Fischler, I. (2001). The Vulnerable Mind: A Neuropsychological Approach to Cognitive Psychology.. psycCRITIQUES, 46(5), 12-26.
Galovski, T. (2004). Road Rage: A Domain For Psychological Intervention?. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 9(2), 105-127.
Squires, G. (2001). Using Cognitive Behavioural Psychology with Groups of Pupils to Improve Self-Control of Behaviour. Educational Psychology in Practice, 17(4), 317-335.
Westen, D., Kowalski, R. M., & Burton, L. J. (2006). Psychology: Australian and New Zealand edition. Milton, Qld.: John Wiley & Sons.
