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The influence of Mind Wandering and Mental Workload on Distracted Driving

Graduate #100
Discipline: Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Subcategory: Social Sciences/Psychology/Economics

Sade Shofidiya - Savannah State University


Globalization and automation has flattened many organizations’ hierarchies. The flattening of organizations comes with more responsibilities for a smaller number of workers. Employees are facing increasingly higher demands in the workplace as the companies do more with less. Technology has made the disconnect from work life challenging as it serves as a constant medium for productivity and communication. Employees are so inundated with work tasks that their cognitive faculties are consumed with work related tasks rather than being mindful and in the moment. Inattentiveness while driving is not limited to technological distractions. Inattentiveness to driving could be due to wandering thoughts. Many people are inundated with work tasks and still consider them while commuting to and from work. While the workers are mentally engaged in idealization of work tasks, they are less attentive to the task of driving and thus make errors while commuting which may result in accidents.

The objective of this research is to examine and understand the relationship between mind wandering and mental workload. This research is an interdisciplinary study of management, psychology, and transportation planning. More specifically we would like to conduct an empirical study (survey based research with a sample size approximately equal to 500) that’s targeted at major cities with excess of 5 million population. Our target sample would be working professionals with a minimum of 2 years of work experience and those who commute daily to work using personal cars and/or transit system for at least a duration of 30 min (combined transit and car). A conceptual model with the following latent exogenous variables (mental workload, stress, office workload, and home workload) are assumed to have an influence on endogenous latent variable (mind wandering, distracted commute, distracted driving, and cognitive failures). Multiple hypotheses will be tested as part of this research, and these include the cause and effect relationships between the exogenous factors and the endogenous factors. Although the overall premise/hypotheses of the study is to find a positive relationship between mind wandering and distracted driving. A structural equation modeling will be used to analyze the relationships between the latent variables. Established scales and survey questions from transportation literature as well as psychology will be utilized to conduct the study. Additionally, duration of commute will be used as a moderator, as we believe that the longer the commute the greater the chance of mind wandering and distraction.

Not Submitted

Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Science Foundation

Faculty Advisor: Suman Niranjan, niranjans@savannahstate.edu

Role: I was involved conducting research with my mentor (Dr. Niranjan)at various stages of the project. I assisted with the research design, literature review, survey questions, and conducting the survey. I will also be involved in the data analysis using advanced statistical methods.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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