title: Impulsivity and risky decision making among taxi drivers in Hong Kong: An event-related potential study.
abstract: Taxi drivers play an important role in providing safe and professional public transport services. However, they tend to be more involved than other professional driver groups in accidents caused by deliberate recklessness. This study used an event-related potential (ERP) experiment to examine risk-taking behavior arising from impulsivity by comparing the underlying neural processes of taxi drivers with and without traffic offence records in Hong Kong. A sample of 15 traffic offenders and 15 nonoffenders, matched by sociodemographic characteristics, was recruited. The results show that the offender group demonstrated significantly less negative-going (less negative) feedback-related negativity but more positive-going (more positive) feedback-related P300 when than with their nonoffending counterparts. These findings show that taxi drivers with traffic offence records were less sensitive to the consequences of behavior and more attuned to the magnitude of potential reward. In addition, behavioral data revealed that they were more willing to make risky decisions. All these characteristics pertain to impulsive personality traits. Based on these findings, we can conclude that the offenders in this sample were more impulsive than their nonoffending counterparts.
authors.affiliation: Ergonomics and Human Performance Laboratory, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address: andy.cheng@polyu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Andy S K
authors.initials: ASK
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Applied Cognitive Neurosciences Laboratory, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: K H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Ting
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Karen P Y
authors.initials: KPY
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Automobile Safety and Energy, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yutao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ba
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic; D000328:Adult; D001334:Automobile Driving; D057237:Criminals; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009790:Occupations; D012201:Reward; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012449:Safety; D014186:Transportation
keywords: Event-related potentials; Impulsivity; Risk-taking behavior; Taxi driver; Traffic offence