We have a new study out!

The short version is this: "Car Brain" - the cultural blind spot that makes people apply double standards when they think about driving - is real, measurable and pervasive.

Read on for more details... 1/14 @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

This work was carried out with top-class humans @[email protected] and @[email protected]. We did something deliberately very simple: we had an independent polling agency contact a representative sample of 2157 people across the UK and ask them five questions 2/14
Randomly, people either got questions about driving or they got the same set of questions with a couple of words changed so that they asked exactly the same things, but not about driving 3/14

For example, half were asked if they agreed:

"People shouldn't drive in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe the car fumes"

and half got:

"People shouldn't smoke in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe the cigarette fumes"

4/14

(We originally considered specific v general questions, e.g.,

"People driving cars in public places should be liable for any harm..."

"People operating machinery in public places should be liable..."

but decided that changing the context was neater and less subjective) 5/14

Here's the full set of answers. As you can see, responses could change dramatically when driving was mentioned. All except Question 2 were hugely statistically different.

This doesn't make sense! The principle is the same in both forms of each question; only context changes 6/14

What we demonstrated is an example of the "Special Pleading Fallacy" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading where certain specific cases get a free ride in thought and discourse. People selectively fail to apply the moral and ethical standards they would use in other contexts 7/14
Special pleading - Wikipedia

Is this self-interest? Cognitive dissonance? Most people drive, so it might make sense they'd make excuses.

But no. We separated out the subset of people who didn't themselves drive and they basically responded the same as the drivers, also making special pleading for cars 8/

This all required a deeper explanation. We interpreted the findings within a socio-ecological framework: each of us is surrounded by a series of social, physical and cultural environments that shape how we think and act. And how do these look when it comes to motoring...? 9/14
We routinely see people driving short distances, speeding, parking badly, all while given priority over pedestrians; free parking; urban and residential streets designed for fast driving; subsidies; lax enforcement of traffic laws; clearly deadly vehicles made legal... 10/14
Growing up surrounded by that environment, people internalise the idea that fast, untrammelled, near-consequence-free motoring is normal and, moreover, people conclude that *this must surely be the proper way of things*. In our paper we call this mindset "Motonormativity" 11/14
We chose this term to draw parallels with other areas such as heteronormativity, where similarly a certain perspective unthinkingly gets accepted as both normal and proper, with other groups obliged to accommodate this https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-heteronormativity.html 12/14
What Is Heteronormativity?

@ianwalker

Love that you referenced 'heteronomative'. I've done a non-scientific experiment w/this very concept. It involves asking people to close their eyes and picture what the first Homo sapiens looked like...9 out of 10 times they reply; white male.

That 1 out of 10? The epiphany.

I'm hoping your research will result in the same epiphanies on a grand scale.