Overview

• Published in Frontiers in Political Science, the study by UC assistant professors Rachel Torres and Ben Farrer examined driver reactions to vehicles that either cut them off or made an ordinary turn.
• Participants reported a significantly greater likelihood of honking when the offending car displayed the rival party compared with neutral or same‑party stickers.
• The experiment found no increase in patience or positive feelings toward drivers signaling the participant’s own party.
• Researchers recruited U.S. adult drivers, gathered demographic and personality data including agreeableness and authoritarianism, and excluded nondrivers from the sample.
• The authors say vehicle political signaling can reinforce partisan divides in daily life with potential road‑safety implications, while emphasizing the findings reflect self-reports in simulations rather than observed road behavior.