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Psychologist Julie Aitken Shermer from the University of Western Ontario in Canada surveyed and analyzed the responses over 500 people to explore the connection between “dark” personality traits and a love of loud cars with modified mufflers.
“Because these modifications to suppressors interfere with people and animals, and are illegal in some jurisdictions… understanding who wants their car to be louder is an interesting research question,” Shermer wrote in Psychology Today.
The average age of respondents is 18 years, 52% of them are men. Respondents were asked about attitudes toward loud cars and modified mufflers, and were additionally asked to complete the Dark Triad, a 28-item scale measuring the personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism.
Shermer said that she often encounters loud cars when walking her dog, and suggested that the desire to modify the muffler so that it can be heard better can be associated with a desire to attract attention.
“We found that sadism and psychopathy tend to differentiate those who want to modify their mufflers, who feel more connected to their car, and who think loud cars are really cool,” Shermer says. “They probably get a kick out of watching people get scared.”
In the end, high scores in the desire to own a loud car showed a connection with each of the dark triadic traits (albeit only slightly in the case of Machiavellianism and narcissism, which cannot be said for sadism).
While the study provides some insight, there are, of course, caveats. Participants in this small sample were relatively young and all received a business degree from the same university, so Shermer's findings may not apply to broader populations. Also during the study, respondents were only asked about their desire to own noisy cars, but they did not actually own them; and other noisy vehicles such as motorcycles were also not examined.
Research published in Current Issues in Personality Psychology (via Science Alert).
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