Vanessa Heywood
Vanessa Heywood is an experienced professional with a 25-year career in the varied fields of audit, finance, conference production and business development. She recently completed a Masters in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and holds a BA in French and Management Studies. She is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a member of the Global Association of Applied Behavioural Scientists (GAABS). She is passionate about applying the behavioural sciences to real world challenges in public policy and organisational settings, and is currently working as a freelance behavioural scientist based in Dubai. Her previous experiences working for UK government, the European Union, the United Nations, the private sector and a professional body give her a broad world view that informs her reflections on how people think and act across a diverse range of contexts.
A behaviour change experiment: Can showing drivers they are poor multitaskers discourage them from texting while driving?
Texting while driving (TWD) is a form of distracted driving that causes accidents and injury. Around 360,000 people were injured in distracted driving accidents in the US in 2021 (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2023). TWD is banned in 49 states (Governors Highway Safety Association, 2023) yet people do it despite it being dangerous and illegal; Gliklich et al. (2016) reported that 48% of respondents had read texts while driving. Against this background, policymakers seeking to reduce TWD might consider behaviour change interventions that take account of psychological factors.
Among a rich body of literature exploring why people text and drive, one research stream considers drivers’ misplaced confidence in their multitasking ability. As a form of multitasking, TWD relies on limited working memory capacity to store and process presently needed information (Nijboer et al., 2016). Only a small percentage of drivers can multitask without performance decrement (Strayer et al., 2011); yet drivers’ perceptions of their ability to text and drive are often poorly calibrated to reality if not inflated (Sanbonmatsu et al., 2013) and this sense of self-efficacy at the TWD task predicts TWD intentions (Shevlin & Goodwin, 2019).
This presentation reports on an online experiment aimed at discouraging US drivers from TWD by showing them they are poor multitaskers. The treatment group completed a challenging multitasking exercise and received feedback; the control group performed simple, sequential tasks and received no feedback. Treatment reduced TWD self-efficacy by about 9% (p<.01) and intention to text while driving by about 6% (p<.05) after accounting for covariates.
These findings suggest that self-efficacy is a promising lever for behaviour change interventions to reduce TWD. Future research could develop an accessible online TWD simulation to replicate the task and feedback concept tested here and explore whether such an intervention can reduce actual TWD behaviour.
References:
Gliklich, E., Guo, R., & Bergmark, R. W. (2016). Texting while driving: A study of 1211 US adults with the Distracted Driving Survey. Preventive Medicine Reports, 4, 486-489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2016.09.003
Governors Highway Safety Association. (2023, July). Distracted driving laws by state. https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/DistractedDrivingLawChart-July23.pdf
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2023). Traffic safety facts research note: Distracted driving in 2021 (DOT HS 813 443). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813443
Nijboer, M., Borst, J. P., Van Rijn, H., & Taatgen, N. A. (2016). Driving and multitasking: The good, the bad, and the dangerous. Frontiers in Psychology, 1718. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01718
Sanbonmatsu, D. M., Strayer, D. L., Medeiros-Ward, N., & Watson, J. M. (2013). Who multi-tasks and why? Multi-tasking ability, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. Plos One, 8(1), e54402. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054402
Shevlin, B. R., & Goodwin, K. A. (2019). Past behavior and the decision to text while driving among young adults. Transportation Research part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 60, 58-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2018.09.027
Strayer, D. L., Watson, J. M., & Drews, F. A. (2011). Cognitive distraction while multitasking in the automobile. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 54, 29-58. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-385527-5.00002-4