‘Have a Blessed Day’ but get the &^%$ out of my way
June 18 , 2008

Used to be, “scientists” thought they could determine personality, character, etc., by reading the bumps on a person’s head. Their intellectual heirs would eventually come up with the theory of Intelligent Design, but the bump-reading thing itself never really caught on.

Today, of course, science has made great strides and researchers (most of them, anyway) are far more sophisticated than were the bump readers. A psychologist today claims we can divine peoples’ temperaments not by reading the knots on their crania but rather by checking their cars for bumper stickers.

According to Colorado State University social psychologist William Szlemko and his associates, people are profoundly territorial, a holdover perhaps from our caveman days when we had to fight tooth and nail for a good seat at the dinosaur races, or bust our butts to be the first one in the forest to have a high-def cave painting.

This need to define our own personal space still exists, and now it encompasses our cars.  As a result, we festoon them with window decals (“No Fear,” the Virgin of Guadalupe), personalized license plates (IM HRNY) and bumper stickers (“Honk If I’m An Aggie!”) to make them us feel “at home.”

Szlemko and his pals think that the problem with all this automotive bling is that it makes some of us feel too much at home, and we start to confuse our cars with our houses. And so, when another driver does something we don’t like, we react as if our neighbor had let his pet velociraptor leave a steaming pile in front of the cave again, and we go all prehistoric and hit them with a club – or at least honk and flip them off.

Oddly enough, Szlemko says it doesn’t matter what the content of the bumper sticker is; it might be, “Kill ‘Em All and Let God Sort ‘Em Out” or “Warning: I Brake for Unicorns” – the end result is the same. And the result, according to Szlemko, is a greater tendency for road rage.

People with these "territorial markers" are more likely to go postal when someone cuts into “their” lane or doesn’t hit the gas a nanosecond after the light turns green. They’re also far more likely than those who don’t personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express their disapproval -- by honking, tailgating and generally acting like a tool. And according to Szlemko, the more stuff on the car, the bigger the tool.

One thing I have to disagree with – I don’t think all bumper stickers are created equal, and I think you can tell a lot about a driver from what their bumpers say. For instance, have you ever seen a peace sign on a Suburban? Or those “Support Our Troops” ribbons – the ones everyone mounts wrong, and they end up looking like a big vinyl Pepperidge Farm goldfish? Ever seen one on a Prius?

See what I’m saying?