Sanbonmatsu Et. Al's Study

Cell-phone use diminishes self-awareness of impaired driving

In Sanbonmatsu et al’s study on cell-phone use and its relation to diminished self-awareness of impaired driving, a mixed research approach was used; part of it was correlational, the other part experimental. Correlational, in measuring the extent of the difference between two factors and how well they predict each other. Experimental, in the method that investigators manipulated independent variables to observe the effect on the dependent variable. It was hypothesized, that when involved in multiple tasks a person’s awareness of the task performance, as well as their assessment of their own performance, is compromised. Sanbonmatsu et al. could assume due to previous research
Participants were randomly assigned to either the control group that did not use a cell-phone or an experimental group that used cell-phones. Sanbonmatsu et al., assessed the participants driving practices. Then participants were allowed to practice with the driving simulator. Fifty participants, or the experimental group, made a call to a family member or friend before starting to drive, fifty participants, the control group, did not. All one hundred participants drove inside the simulator for 20 minutes and encountered 12 potentially hazardous situations. The experimenter recorded driving errors using a checklist of specific errors. After participants finished the simulated driving session they had to use a checklist to recall the number of each type of driving errors they had made. After these participants rated the safeness of driving using the simulator on a scale of -3 to +3, rating general ability to drive safely while distracted such as talking on cell-phone from 1 to 7 (Sabmatsu et al.,
The second hypothesis, cell-phone use diminishing participants ability to self-monitoring their own driving safety accurately, was also supported by the experiment. The third hypotheses, control participants’ having a better memory of their errors than the cell-phone using participants, was not supported by a statistically significant amount of evidence. The fourth hypothesis was supported, control participants confidence in their ability to drive safely while distracted was correlated with their actual safe driving. They successfully self-monitored. Finally, the fifth hypothesis was also supported, cell-phone users were less aware of the negative effects of cell-phone use on their driving, their assessments of their general ability and their errors was uncorrelated with their bad driving. The cell-phone use made it hard for them to see their own errors. They were thus unable to self-monitor