Social cognition and driving: Theory of mind is associated with drivers’ hazard perception

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

For many, driving enables participation in different aspects of life. However, crashes can incur substantial personal and economic burdens. There has been ample research documenting the cognitive factors that predict crash risk (e.g., attention). However, a large part of driving involves interaction with other road users. This means that social-cognitive factors may also be implicated in crash risk. Here, in a sample of N = 120 young adult drivers, we measured important aspects of driver skill (hazard perception) and driving style (following distance), which predict crash risk, and tested their association with two novel social-cognitive variables: (1) theory of mind (for hazard perception), and (2) empathic concern (for following distance). Empathic concern was not associated with following distance. However, individuals’ theory of mind was associated with their hazard perception skill performance. This highlights that social-cognitive factors can be associated with crash risk and demonstrates the potentially far-reaching consequences of drivers’ theory of mind for road-user safety.