This paper describes a study of attitude change strategies in relation to driving violations, and its possible implications for future road safety campaigns. The study attempted to improve drivers' attitudes to not speeding in a 30 mph residential zone. The paper first describes the development of the persuasive anti-speeding messages, used in these studies, and the development of an attitude measure used to estimate changes in attitudes to driving violations. Cognitive "tuning sets" ('transmitter' and 'receiver' sets) were manipulated in the study, in an attempt to discover negative attitudes to speeding. "Transmitters" seem more motivated than receivers to elaborate message arguments. The experimental design consisted of four conditions from cognitive tuning set manipulation and a control condition. 58 male and female drivers, of age 18 to 45, were informed that the researchers were developing materials, designed to change public attitudes to behaviours usually considered antisocial. The drivers' scores on the speeding subscales were analysed statistically. The authors succeeded in producing more negative attitudes to speeding, by presenting a persuasive message with non-speeding arguments to subjects who had previously been induced with a transmitter tuning set. Transmitters, exposed to a strong persuasive message about speeding, changed their attitude against it but not against other traffic violations. This indicates that road safety campaigns should be violation and situation specific.
Abstract