Cell-phone use diminishes self-awareness of impaired driving

Strayer, David L. · 2015 · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

DOI: 10.3758/s13423-015-0922-4

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Summary

This study investigates how multitasking, specifically talking on a cell phone while driving, affects drivers’ self-awareness of their performance. The authors address the problem that drivers often overestimate their ability to multitask safely, potentially due to diminished monitoring of their own behavior. While previous research established that cell-phone use impairs driving performance, this study examines whether it also impairs the driver’s ability to recognize those impairments. The authors hypothesized that engaging in a secondary task would reduce the accuracy of self-performance ratings and diminish the correlation between actual driving errors and perceived safety. The experiment involved 100 undergraduate participants randomly assigned to either a cell-phone group or a control group. Participants drove in a simulator for approximately 20 minutes along an 8.2-km residential route containing 12 hazardous scenarios, such as stopping for pedestrians or yielding to other vehicles. The cell-phone group used a hands-free device to talk on a cell phone during the drive, while the control group drove without distraction. An experimenter recorded actual driving errors, which were categorized as "serious" (e.g., running red lights, swerving into oncoming lanes) or "minor" (e.g., speeding, failing to signal). After the drive, participants rated the safeness of their driving, recalled the number of errors they made, and assessed their general confidence in their ability to drive safely while distracted. The results confirmed that cell-phone use significantly increased the number of serious driving errors compared to the control group. Crucially, the study found a dissociation between actual performance and self-assessment in the cell-phone group. For control participants, self-assessments of driving safety were negatively correlated with the number of serious errors made, indicating that they were aware of their poor performance. In contrast, cell-phone participants’ assessments of safety and confidence were uncorrelated with their actual errors. Furthermore, control participants’ memory of their serious errors was positively correlated with actual errors, whereas cell-phone participants showed no such correlation, suggesting they were largely unaware of the specific mistakes they made. The significance of these findings lies in the demonstration that multitasking not only degrades performance but also impairs the self-monitoring necessary for self-regulation. Because cell-phone users are less aware of their driving errors, they are less likely to make compensatory adjustments or recognize their limitations. This diminished self-awareness helps explain why drivers persist in using cell phones behind the wheel despite the known risks; their overconfidence is not merely a bias but a result of an inability to accurately monitor their own impaired performance. The study suggests that interventions aimed at reducing distracted driving must address this lack of self-awareness, as drivers cannot effectively self-regulate if they cannot perceive their own errors.

Key finding

Cell-phone conversation while driving not only degrades performance, it also breaks the link between actual performance and self-assessment: drivers who talked on a cell phone showed no correlation between self-rated safeness and observed driving errors, whereas non-talking drivers' self-ratings tracked their errors. Multitasking thus diminishes self-monitoring, which helps explain why distracted drivers fail to take corrective action.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: N=100 undergraduates (67 female, 33 male; mean age 21.8 yr), randomly assigned to cell-phone (n=50) or control (n=50) condition. Note: Table 1 error-severity ratings were collected from a sub-sample of N=69.

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• mobile phones
• situational awareness
• decision making risk perception
• mind wandering
• cognitive
• manual

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence, behavioral performance data
• Theoretical Contribution: theory or model