People Prefer Angry-Faced Cars

fatalfury writes "Researchers from the University of Vienna asked 20 males and 20 females to rank vehicles based on their appearance. The list of traits included arrogant, afraid, agreeable, disgusted, extroverted, sad, and others. Cars with 'meaner' traits (such as BMW) ranked higher, whereas cars with 'nicer' traits (such as Toyota's Prius) ranked lower. With billions spent on developing new products in the automobile industry, this could spur a trend in meaner-looking cars and perhaps explain why sales of the Prius and other green cars are slow to take off with average consumers."

Comments

Re:As a non-driver

[caluml]

I know that for some reason it is *much* easier to be nice and let a VW beetle out from a side road than a BMW or SUV.

BMWs, Jags, Mercs tend to never say thankyou for being let out. They seem to assume that they own the road. Therefore I deliberately don't let them out.
Also, I notice - they're the last to switch their lights on when it starts to get dark - or when there's fog/spray on the motorways. I put that down to them assuming that everyone "can see them because they're so important, in their important car".
Psycho-analyze that. :)

Re:As a non-driver

[Chatsubo]

When I moved from a rather ordinary looking ford to a BMW, I noticed a sudden and drastic change in the way traffic around me responded.

The biggest of this is, when I'm cuising down the fast lane (my driving habits didn't change all that much, actually these days I tend to cruise a bit slower), people tend to get out of my way much quicker.

From the get-go I've suspected that this is because my car looks "angrier" and that people somehow feel that the guy sitting behind the wheel is exuding that same aggressiveness, and thus just want to get out of the way.

However another theory I have is that people assume BMW == asshole and expect me to be excessively aggressive because of that.

The again, I've thought much about how certain cars (like my poor BMW) get a bad rap for having "asshole" drivers... if a BMW driver doesn't signal, he's a f&^% bmw driver, if another driver does the same, he's just a f&%^ idiot. Maybe it'll turn out to be based more on the cars' looks than anything else. The car looks angry, therefore the driver must be angry, therefore he must be an asshole.