Daily Auto News Study: People Like Their Cars Angry
Daily Auto News
Is the VW Bug’s stubby nose just too cute for you? Does the snarling mouth of an Audi R8 turn your head? And why are we using parts of the face to describe cars.
Because, apparently, everyone does. And we like our cars mean.
MSNBC reports, “People readily see faces and traits in cars, and a new study suggests that they prefer cars to appear dominant, masculine and angry.” The research, conducted by EFS Consulting of Vienna, “asked 20 males and 20 females to rate 38 passenger car models which came out between 2004 and 2006.” Study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics (GM), which allowed the men and women to rate certain traits on a sliding scale (such as “infancy” to “adulthood”). The traits represented maturity, sex, attitudes, emotions, and personality — “all things that people infer from human faces at a single glance.”
Later, participants were asked “whether they saw a human face, animal face or no face at all on the cars. They drew facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth on the car images whenever they did see faces.” Finally, they were asked whether they liked each car’s design.
The result? “People overwhelmingly preferred cars that rated highest on ‘power traits.’ High ‘power’ cars like the BMW 5 Series tended to be lower or wider, and have slit-like or angled headlights with a wider air intake.” Lowest on the scale were cars like the Toyota Prius. Though the matter might seem subjective, the study participants “largely agreed on which cars had which traits, such as arrogant, afraid and agreeable.”
Of course, the Prius has been a tremendous sales success for Toyota, so it’s possible that, while people might infer personality traits in cars based on their design, they don’t necessarily buy cars on that factor. Still, in a competitive market, automakers might seek to make their cars look more aggressive in order to appeal to more buyers. Kicking Tires comments, “We’re not sure if this is the future of designing cars, but it probably means we’ll be looking at more big-mouthed grilles in the future.”
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