Who likes loud cars? Ontario study suggests they skew young, male and score high on psychopathy and sadism

There's a clandestine car scene in Canada that most people often don't see, but they can sure hear it — usually at night and often from a bedroom window left open in the summer with the hope of catching a cool overnight breeze.

The noise is often hard to place in terms of distance, but definitely distinct: young gearheads who gather at unsanctioned car rallies in empty parking lots, or guerrilla drag races at desolate city intersections. 

These tricked-out rides — with the gunshot pop of tailpipes, the surly roar of engines and the sound of tires screaming rubber against pavement — pierce the night and sometimes even the restless buzz of the day. They're heard through trees and over rooftops, in some cases, jarring people awake and prompting calls to police. 

For Julie Aitken Schermer, a professor of psychology and management and organizational studies at Western University in London, Ont., they'd rumble by as she walked her dog just south of the campus. 

"Every day we come across these loud cars and pickup trucks and motorcycles that are backfiring and I get startled," she said. "My dog was startled. I see the animals run away that are in the trees and squirrels on the ground.

"I thought, 'Oh, who really wants to make this kind of noise?' And so a typical academic, I went and did an extensive search and found nothing."

Because there were no psychological studies on what kind of person prefers loud cars, Schermer conducted one of her own.

The pilot study, titled "A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism," was published last year in the international journal Current Issues in Personality Psychology. Schermer also wrote about it in Psychology Today. 

As part of the research, Schermer surveyed 529 undergrad business students — 289 men, 234 women and six who identified as "other." They were asked if they viewed their car as an extension of themselves, how much they thought loud cars were "cool" and if they would make their cars louder with muffler modifications. 

Schermer also gave them a Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) personality measure — another questionnaire that assesses a cluster of malicious personality traits, including narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism (linked to being cunning and manipulative).

When she got the results, she expected to see a strong correlation between someone who prefers a look-at-me exhaust system and narcissism, but that wasn't the case. 

"We found that it was sadism and psychopathy was predicting who wants to modify their mufflers, who feels more connected to their vehicle, and they think loud cars are really cool.

"It seems to be this callous disregard for other people's feelings and their reactions. That's the psychopathy coming out and it's also they probably get a kick out of enjoying watching people get startled."

As you can imagine, some car enthusiasts don't react well to this study.