Book Review: Aggressive driving: Insights derived from Psychology’s General Aggression Model, Criminal Justice Recent Scholarship

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567714543366
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Author: Ruth X. Liu
• Date: 01 December 2014
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

in-depth discussions on similar topics and improve critical thinking on topics that revolve around

ethics, perception of justice, and legality.

Lin, Y. (2013).

Aggressive driving: Insights derived from Psychology’s General Aggression Model, Criminal Justice Recent Scholarship.

Nicholas P. Lovrich, ed. El Paso, Texas: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC. xii, 180 pp. $67.00,

ISBN 978-1-59332-606-7.

Reviewed by: Ruth X. Liu, San Diego State University, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567714543366

In Aggressive Driving: Insights Derived from Psychology’s General Aggression Model, Lin (2013)

proposes and tests a theoretical model that incorporates Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control

theory within Psychology’s General Aggression framework to explain risky and aggressive driving

behaviors. With survey data provided by young drivers (average age of 19.06 and 19.3) drawn from

two independent studies, Lin examines the model using structural equations modeling technique. He

discusses the findings in reference to both the theoretical validity and policy implications.

The book is organized into five chapters. The first or the opening chapter states the importance

of the study, the extent of aggressive driving in the United States and elsewhere, public perceptions

of the problem as well as definitions of aggressive driving. This chapter ends with a review of factors

that have reportedly been found to predict aggressive driving behavior.

The book follows its logical order in the second chapter to discuss the theoretical framework

for studying aggressive and risky driving. Lin gives a fair presentation of the self-control theory

and its origin of development. He discusses elements of self-control and the operationalization of

this theoretical concept as a unidimensional, 2-factor versus a 6-factor concept. He concludes that

self-control has been linked to risky and aggressive driving in empirical studies and that various

components of self-control may have different effects on different criminal outcomes.

Concurrent with the self-control theory, Lin introduces General Aggression Model developed by

Anderson and Bushman (2002), which has been used to examine violence and/or aggression in general.

In presenting the model, Lin focuses on mediational and moderating processes of aggression, whi ch posi t

that personal factors (such as attitudes toward violence and trait aggression) and situational factors

(such as exposure to violence) may interact to influence the components of an individual’s current

internal state including affect, arousal, and cognition. Besides the mediational/moderating pro-

cesses, the general aggression model acknowledges a feedback loop in which behaviors may shape

the individual’s personal and situational factors through repeated social encounters (Lin, 2013).

In the subsequent chapters, Lin lays out hypotheses to be tested in his study and discusses the

methodology and findings, respectively. Integrating self-control components with the psychological

model of aggression, Lin tests three hypothesized relationships, which state that (1) self -control

concepts such as impulsivity and sensational seekingmayresultinconsiderationforfuturethat

leads to aggressive personality; (2) individual traits affect situations that persons place themselves

in and interpretations that the persons develop of the situations. Furthermore, (3) aggressive per-

sonality along with driving situations may interact and in turn lead to the display of aggressive

driving (Lin, 2013).

One of the strengths of Lin’s study is that it utilizes two independent sample data to cross-validate

the hypothesized relationships. The second sample consisting of randomly selected novice drivers

is supposedly much larger and more representative of young-age drivers. However, based on the

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