The aim of the present experiment was to determine if inducing a depressed mood would result in a decrease or elimination of the positive illusory perception of driving skill and perceived invulnerability to accidents. The standard Velten mood induction procedure was used, in which subjects are presented with a series of self-referent statements such as 'i feel so tired and gloomy that i would rather just sit than do anything'. Subjects were asked to try to get into the mood consistent with the statement. Three different techniques were investigated: (1) increasing availability in memory for driving errors and accidents; (2) increasing accountability for judgments of skill and safety; and inducing 'depressive realism'. Each of these are considered in turn. Results demonstrated that speeded articulation was affected by mood induction suggesting that the effect is not entirely due to demand characteristics. Here, for the first time there is independent information that manipulation has been successful. In previous examples of accountability and selective memory search there is no independent verification that the manipulation worked so it remains a possibility that if there were successful manipulations of selective memory and accountability then significant debasing may have occurred. The critical question is did the mood induction result in any debasing and the simple answer is that there was no evidence for debasing. Overall, the results indicate first, that in the area of perceived accident involvement there is evidence for the presence of the illusion of control but no evidence for unrealistic optimism; second, the illusory judgments of driving skill are compatible with self enhancement but not downward comparison theory; third, illusory self enhancement occurs for a wide range of component driving skills and fourth, attempts at debasing have shown little signs of success. Although there might have been some small effect using the accountability technique there was no convincing evidence.
Samenvatting