Klatt, Wilhelm; Chesham, Alvin; Lobmaier, Janek (2016). Putting Up a Big Front: Car Design and Size Affect Road-Crossing Behaviour. PLoS ONE, 11(7), e0159455. Public Library of Science 10.1371/journal.pone.0159455
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Previous research suggests that people tend to see faces in car fronts and that they attribute personality characteristics to car faces. In the present study we investigated whether car design influences pedestrian road-crossing behaviour. An immersive virtual reality environment with a zebra crossing scenario was used to determine a) whether the minimum accepted distance for crossing the street is larger for cars with a dominant appearance than for cars with a friendly appearance and b) whether the speed of dominant-looking cars is overestimated as compared to friendly-looking cars. Participants completed both tasks while either standing on the pavement or on the centre island. We found that people started to cross the road later in front of friendly-looking low-power cars compared to dominant-looking high-power cars, but only if the cars were relatively large in size. For small cars we found no effect of power. The speed of smaller cars was estimated to be higher compared to large cars (size-speed bias). Furthermore, there was an effect of starting position: From the centre island, participants entered the road significantly later (i. e. closer to the approaching car) and left the road later than when starting from the pavement. Similarly, the speed of the cars was estimated significantly lower when standing on the centre island compared to the pavement. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that car fronts elicit responses on a behavioural level.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Cognitive Psychology, Perception and Methodology 10 Strategic Research Centers > ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research 07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Cognitive Psychology, Perception and Methodology > Biologische Psychologie (SNF) [discontinued] |
UniBE Contributor: |
Klatt, Wilhelm, Chesham, Alvin, Lobmaier, Janek Simon |
Subjects: |
100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology |
ISSN: |
1932-6203 |
Publisher: |
Public Library of Science |
Funders: |
[4] Swiss National Science Foundation |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Wilhelm Klatt |
Date Deposited: |
21 Jul 2016 11:11 |
Last Modified: |
02 Mar 2023 23:27 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1371/journal.pone.0159455 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Face Perception; anthropomorphism; face pareidolia; face-like objects; pedestrian behaviour; automotive design; virtual reality |
BORIS DOI: |
10.7892/boris.84908 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/84908 |
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