Living fast and driving fast. Life history strategies, personality, and aggressive driving

In this research, we proposed Life history theory as an underlying framework that should explain the link between personality and driving aggression. We hypothesized that agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and the Dark Triad traits would mediate the relationship between fast life history strategies and aggressive driving. We relied on 448 participants (Mage = 31.75, SD = 12.08, 66.5 % women) that completed measures of life history strategies, Big Five factors, the Dark Triad traits, and driving aggression. We found that individuals high in fast life history strategies were also high in driving aggression. Those high in neuroticism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy were aggressive behind the wheel and those high in agreeableness and conscientiousness were low in driving aggression. Psychopathy mediated the relationship between fast life history strategies and driving aggression. This may be explained by the fact that personality traits are broad behavioral adaptations that reflect life history strategies. In other words, life history strategies do not properly exist on their own on the behavioral level. They express behaviorally in terms of stable, cross-situational personality traits.