Social value, normative features and gender differences associated with speeding and compliance with speed limits

International audience; Introduction: Among risky driving behaviours, speeding is a main causal and aggravating factor of road crashes and is more frequent among men than women. Research suggests that this gender gap could be explained by gender social norms which lead men to assign more social value to speeding than women. However, few studies had proposed to directly investigate gendered prescriptive norms associated with speeding. We proposed to address this gap through two studies based on the socio-cognitive approach to social norms of judgment.Methods. Study 1 (N = 128, within-subject design) investigated the extent to which speeding is subject to social valuation among men, compared to women, through a self-presentation task. Study 2 (N = 885, between-subject design) aimed to identify the dimension of social value (i.e., social desirability, social utility) that both genders associated with speeding, based on a judgment task.Results and conclusion: Although results of study 1 indicate that both genders devaluate speeding and valuate speed limits compliance, we found that men do so to a lesser extent than women. Results of study 2 further suggest that men less valuate speed limit compliance than women on the social desirability dimension, while no gender difference were found in valuation of speeding on both dimensions of social value. Regardless of gender, results also indicate that speeding is valued more on the social utility than on the social desirability dimension, while speed limit compliance is valued similarly on both dimensions.Practical applications: Road safety campaigns toward men could benefit to focus more on enhancing the representations of speed compliant drivers, in terms of social desirability, than devaluing the representation of speeding drivers.