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Introduction: Maladaptive behavior often results from poor decision-making and by extension poor control over decisions. Since maladaptive behavior in driving, such as excessive speed, can lead to dramatic consequences, identifying its causes is of particular concern. The present study investigated how risk-taking and executive functioning are related to driving performance and habits among the general population., Method: Five hundred and eighty-nine participants completed an on-road driving session with a professional driving instructor and a self-reported checklist of difficult driving situations typically avoided. Additionally, participants completed a set of experimental tasks assessing risk-taking tendencies, reactive adaptive mechanisms, and two distinct forms of inhibition: interference control and response inhibition., Results: The results of the present study revealed several significant findings. Firstly, poor driving performance was associated with a high avoidance of challenging driving situations. Secondly, neither form of inhibition studied (interference control or response inhibition) predicted driving performance. Thirdly, while greater involvement in reactive adaptive mechanisms did not predict better on-road performance, it was associated with a reduced tendency to avoid difficult situations. Surprisingly, a higher propensity for risk-taking predicted better on-road performance., Discussion: Overall, these results underline limited links between executive functioning and driving performance while highlighting a potentially more complex relationship between risk-taking tendencies and driving. Executive functioning, however, appears to be linked to driving habits., Competing Interests: Authors AD and ID-EG were employed by company ECCA Conduite, Lyon, France. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The authors declare that this study received funding from the ECCA Conduite company. The funder had the following involvement in the study: with the help of their trained psychologists, recruited the participants and carried out the experimental testing and driving audit., (Copyright © 2023 Le Denmat, Grisetto, Delevoye-Turrell, Vantrepotte, Davin, Dinca, Desenclos-El Ghoulti and Roger.)

According to the dual mechanisms of control (DMC), reactive and proactive control are involved in adjusting behaviors when maladapted to the environment. However, both contextual and inter-individual factors increase the weight of one control mechanism over the other, by influencing their cognitive costs. According to one of the DMC postulates, limited reactive control capacities should be counterbalanced by greater proactive control to ensure control efficiency. Moreover, as the flexible weighting between reactive and proactive control is key for adaptive behaviors, we expected that maladaptive behaviors, such as risk-taking, would be characterized by an absence of such counterbalance. However, to our knowledge, no studies have yet investigated this postulate. In the current study, we analyzed the performances of 176 participants on two reaction time tasks (Simon and Stop Signal tasks) and a risk-taking assessment (Balloon Analog Risk Taking, BART). The post-error slowing in the Simon task was used to reflect the spontaneous individuals' tendency to proactively adjust behaviors after an error. The Stop Signal Reaction Time was used to assess reactive inhibition capacities and the duration of the button press in the BART was used as an index of risk-taking propensity. Results showed that poorer reactive inhibition capacities predicted greater proactive adjustments after an error. Furthermore, the higher the risk-taking propensity, the less reactive inhibition capacities predicted proactive behavioral adjustments. The reported results suggest that higher risk-taking is associated with a smaller weighting of proactive control in response to limited reactive inhibition capacities. These findings highlight the importance of considering the imbalanced weighting of reactive and proactive control in the analysis of risk-taking, and in a broader sense, maladaptive behaviors., Competing Interests: The authors have read the journal’s policies and declare: There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials., (Copyright: © 2023 Grisetto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)