Effects of personality traits on bus drivers' prosocial and aggressive behaviours: risk perception mediator
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281473
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Summary
This study investigates the psychological mechanisms influencing bus drivers' prosocial and aggressive driving behaviors, specifically examining the roles of personality traits, risk perception, and gender. Motivated by the high prevalence of bus-related traffic accidents and the lack of research focusing on prosocial behaviors in professional drivers, the authors sought to determine how personality traits indirectly affect driving behaviors through risk perception and whether gender moderates these relationships. The researchers collected data from 294 valid responses from bus drivers recruited from three geographically diverse cities in China. Participants completed self-report questionnaires measuring four personality traits (anger, sensation-seeking, altruism, and normlessness), risk perception, and prosocial and aggressive driving behaviors. The study employed a moderated mediation model using SPSS PROCESS macro to test hypotheses regarding the mediating role of risk perception and the moderating role of gender. The results confirmed that risk perception mediates the relationship between specific personality traits and driving behaviors. Specifically, normlessness and anger were found to influence both prosocial and aggressive driving behaviors through risk perception. Gender significantly moderated these pathways. For prosocial driving behavior, risk perception had a strong promoting effect on male drivers but no significant effect on female drivers. Regarding aggressive driving behavior, higher risk perception and lower anger were associated with reduced aggression in both genders, but this protective effect was significantly stronger among male drivers. Additionally, the link between anger and aggressive driving was more pronounced in men than in women. The findings highlight that personality traits do not solely act directly on driving behaviors but operate through the cognitive mechanism of risk perception. The study underscores the importance of considering gender differences in traffic safety interventions, as male drivers appear more responsive to risk perception in regulating both prosocial and aggressive behaviors. These results suggest that training programs aimed at improving bus safety should focus on enhancing risk perception and managing anger, particularly for male drivers, to promote safer driving practices.
Key finding
Risk perception mediates the effects of normlessness and anger on bus drivers' prosocial and aggressive behaviors, with gender moderating these relationships such that risk perception more strongly promotes prosocial behavior and reduces aggression in male drivers than in female drivers.
Methodology
survey
Sample size: 294
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | partial | scout | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-08 |
| archive | success | unpaywall | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-04 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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- Theoretical Contribution: theory or model