Groundbreaking 1976 Study Finds Male Drivers Distracted By Women

All it takes to distract a male driver in Chicago is a woman walking by. That’ll be $46,100, please — $221,185 in 2021 dollars.

In 1976, the National Science Foundation gave $46,100 to Dr. Robert A. Baron when he was at Purdue University to study whether women distracted Chicago's male drivers from honking their horns at a stopped car.

Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, described the study:

“Dr. Baron’s assistant would pull his car to a stop at a red light at a Chicago intersection. When the light turned green, the assistant would refuse to move the car for about 15 seconds. The purpose was to determine when and how often the driver immediately behind would become impatient and aggressive enough to honk his horn at the assistant to get moving.”

The study looked to see if sexual arousal, humor and empathy reduced the aggression of horn honking, so Dr. Baron had a young woman walk past the stopped driver.

The women were dressed in a variety of ways — to consider whether sexual arousal played a role, the woman was dressed in a revealing outfit.

To look at whether humor played a role in the driver’s response to the stopped car, the woman wore a clown mask.

To test empathy’s role, the women wore a bandage on her left leg and walked on crutches.

Dr. Baron found that all three reduced the amount of honking.

He found that the drivers smiled at the scantily clad women and in some cases, “whistled and made sexually-oriented comments.”

Proxmire called this “contrived research” and gave the NSF a Golden Fleece award to signify its wasteful use of taxpayer dollars.

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.