A psychologist AND a car nut

[Grunt not revs]

Yep, title sounds like an opener for a joke, but it's not...

I'm looking for somebody who is a psychologist AND a car nut. I'm researching driver behaviour - and, no, it's not about road rage.

Psychologist, by the way, needs to be a properly qualified one.

Anybody out there?

[Codswallop]

What do you consider to be a "properly qualified" psychologist? It's a very broad and diverse profession.

Are you for example only looking for people who have completed a uni undergrad course in Psychology? Postgrad? Particular professional qualification? People who did Psychology but went on to do other work? Etc.etc.

[Grunt not revs]

Somebody who has a professional or academic qualification in psychology, who is in professional practice or academia, can provide informal observations on why people get excited about cars and driving, and his- or her-self has an interest in cars on a petrolhead level.

[Codswallop]

I'm no longer practicing Psychology, so I guess that's me out . Plenty of existing research on similar topics though... I'm sure you've read many if you've done a literature review.

Good luck with your current research project. I'd be interested to hear more about it.

[Grunt not revs]

I'll PM/email you when my 24 hours probation as a new member is up - unless you can PM/email me...?

[StevieBee]

I would have thought you'd need one who isn't a car nut. Prevailing enthusiasm for the subject has the propensity to skew the results, does it not?

[Grunt not revs]

Being a car nut is important in this instance. It needs to be somebody who understands very specifically the passion for cars and driving, and why we get so engrossed in a car's specific characteristics, and get excited about those that do what we want them to do.

[clockworks]

Why would being passionate about cars/driving be any different from a psychological perspective to being passionate about anything else?

[lyonspride]

These days people call themselves a "car nut", "piston head", "petrol head", " enthusiast", when all they do is lease the latest sporty eurobox every 3 years..... And that in itself is going to skew the results, because there's a psychological effect of driving certain brands and being rather closed minded to cars which may drive better, but are simply not a premium brand.

[anonymous-user]

Might be worth contacting Leeds Uni psych dept, they used to do a lot of research into the psychology of driving, they had a rig with a Mx5 connected up to a big screen for various simulations.

I signed up for some research into drunk driving which was very interesting and paid well for driving in a sim and supping vodka.

[Grunt not revs]

Great suggestion, thank-you.