Ego Depletion-Induced Aberrant Driving in the Post-Work Commute

Spillover research has shown that workday stress hampers commuting safety, while ego depletion research has demonstrated that prior self-regulation leads to performance decrements in subsequent tasks. This study sought to unite these two lines of research by proposing that ego depletion-induced alterations in attention and motivation are the mechanisms by which workday experiences spill over to the commute and impair driving safety. To examine the daily influences of these within-person processes on driving behavior in the post-work commute, this study adopted a daily survey design, wherein participants took an online survey immediately before and after each post-work commute across one work week. In these daily surveys, fifty-six participants (N = 56; n = 250 day-level observations) reported their workday self-regulatory demands; pre-commute levels of attention, motivation, and affective states; and driving behavior during the commute home. Using multilevel path analysis to isolate within-person effects, the current study found no evidence to suggest that workday self-regulatory demands lowered pre-commute attention and motivation, nor did it detect associations of attention and motivation with post-work aberrant driving. Results indicated that an ego depleted state might impair attention and motivation but not driving safety in the commute. Instead, the results pointed to the person-level factor of trait self-control as potentially having a greater impact on post-work aberrant driving than daily experiences.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Industrial Organizational Psychology

Department dc:contributor.department

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Mitropoulos, Tanya Elise

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Calderwood, Charles

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Diana, Rachel A.
• Hernandez, Jorge Ivan

• commuting safety
• ego depletion
• work demands
• spillover
• self-regulation

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/101891

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/101891