Whether you live in a "quiet" suburb or a crowded city, a situation like this has probably occurred.
You are minding your own business, say, walking outside and around the block, or trying to relax inside your home — only to be violently disturbed by the sweet sound of a loud, obnoxious set of noises that can come out of a car's exhaust system.
Whether you are a car enthusiast or not, one can agree that these noises — which can vary in description from "loud growling" to "explosions and rapid gunfire," is a nuisance to the public when taken to its obnoxious limits.
However, one academic sought to get to the root of what drives the owners of said cars to want their pride and joys to be as loud as possible, and the results they got were eye-opening.
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Julie Aitken Schermer, Western University psychology and management and organizational studies professor, told CBC News reporter Colin Butler that she was compelled to look into the minds of gearheads whist on a walk with her dog around the campus in London, Ontario, noting that she would encounter loud cars very regularly.
"Every day we come across these loud cars and pickup trucks and motorcycles that are backfiring and I get startled," she told the Canadian news outlet. "My dog was startled. I see the animals run away that are in the trees and squirrels on the ground.
"I thought, 'Oh, who really wants to make this kind of noise?' And so a typical academic, I went and did an extensive search and found nothing."
With no studies on paper finding some sort of psychological link between people and their fast and loud cars, Schermer went out and did her own research. The study she authored, titled "A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism," was published in 2023 in the academic psychology journal Current Issues in Personality Psychology.
As the title of the study suggests, the results of Schermer's study found that the kind of people that leaned toward cars with loud modified exhaust systems leaned male, and that they had high indicators of sadistic and psychopathic behaviors.
In her research, Schermer surveyed 529 undergrad business students, including 289 men, 234 women and six people who identified other gender identities. The professor asked the students if they saw their cars as extensions of themselves, whether they found loud cars to be "cool" and if they would modify their car exhausts to be louder.
Additionally, Schermer also gave the undergrads a Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) personality measure — another questionnaire that assesses a variety of malicious personality traits, including narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
Initially, the professor assumed that the kind of people who had loud exhaust pipes were narcissists, but found something else.
"We found that it was sadism and psychopathy was predicting who wants to modify their mufflers, who feels more connected to their vehicle, and they think loud cars are really cool," Schermer said. "It seems to be this callous disregard for other people's feelings and their reactions. That's the psychopathy coming out and it's also they probably get a kick out of enjoying watching people get startled."
In the comments on a post about the study on the subreddit r/cars, Reddit users who identify themselves as car enthusiasts lambasted the study's findings and poked holes at the professor's methods.
When looking at the demographic of people that Schermer surveyed for the study — which were mostly business students with a mean age of 18 years, Reddit user u/DeceiverSC2 suggested that the study was skewed toward the professor own biases, first by pointing out that she grouped students exclusively from "the most psychopathic and sadist prone program available at a post-secondary institute."
"As we all know — good science begins with making a conclusion, choosing your sample such that it will hopefully lead to your conclusion and then inserting your own personal feelings on the subject into the conclusion. What a poor job by Western University and their faculty."
Reddit user u/Okglue responded to another user with a similar sentiment, noting that it's "disingenuous to report that the study revealed that those who enjoy loud cars skew young, since all participants were young," noting that much was not done to identify other demographic trends, like other academic studies do.
"This study reeks of being poorly thrown together with a narrow, predetermined story to tell. It's shocking that demographic factors other than gender were not considered as these are basic inclusions. [...]"
"I hate loud vehicles. The best way to deal with them is to legislate on the allowable noise level of vehicles. Investigating gender differences in who drives these vehicles is irrelevant to the goal of mitigating noise pollution and only likely to reinforce stereotypes."
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In the comments on a similar post on the subreddit r/Canada, self proclaimed car enthusiast u/klewko87 explained that there is a difference between different types of cars with loud exhaust pipes.
"As a car enthusiast there’s a difference between a nice sounding car like a super car, [or] muscle car with a properly tuned exhaust than some kid with [Chevrolet] cavalier or BMW who just likes to make pops and bangs," the user said. "I appreciate a nice sounding car but there’s a limit. And then it gets to a point where it needs to be taken to the track."
However, user u/hankercizer200 disagrees.
"Actually, all unnecessarily loud vehicles are obnoxious and the people that drive them can f**k off."
"The overwhelming majority of people can’t appreciate why one car noise is good and another is bad. They’re all just annoying noises to us normies and we’d rather just have peace and quiet.
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