The Relationship Between People and Cars By Brenda Williams At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

A TV is an inanimate object that provides entertainment. A can opener is an inanimate object that provides accessibility to food. A train is an inanimate object that moves large groups of people. And so it would follow that a car is an inanimate object that provides individual transportation. No way. Insofar as its relationship to people is concerned a car is in a class by itself.

Marshall McLuhan certainly had some understanding of this back in 1964, when he wrote in "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" "...the car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound." It is certainly arguable that the person who does not own a car, who walks, bikes or takes the bus, feels uncertain, unclad, and incomplete. At the same time, for people who own them, cars do provide an emotional balm unrelated to their function of transportation.

And this is reflected in car purchases. People do choose the cars they buy for practical reasons such as fuel economy, safety, and price. At the same time, emotional factors such as vanity desires play a strong part in car selection. A car is personalized. People name their cars. People attribute emotions to their cars such as obstinacy when they refuse to start. And now there is even some scientific research to support the fact that people personalize their cars.

Vanderbilt University and the University of Colorado at Boulder conducted a study as to how our brains process faces and pictures of cars. It was found that people view cars with the same area of their brains that they view other people's faces.

And if they have to identify cars and faces at the same time they experience a conflict.

Another study was conducted at the University of Vienna to determine how people view cars. They found that one third of the study participants linked a human or animal face with ninety percent of the cars. People who looked at the Classic 1957 Chevy Bel Air perceived the headlights as eyes and the air intake/grille as a mouth. When given emotions and characteristics such as powerful, arrogant, angry, masculine, and dominant, the participants agreed overall as to the cars that had these traits.

The study also found that the most popular cars exuded power and were described as angry, arrogant, masculine, dominant, and mature by both men and women.

And it is not just the car that arouses emotional responses but also some parts of the car. One important part is cup holders. According to a professor at Duke University and a cultural anthropologist, we experience the interior of our automobile on a subconscious level. Therefore, how a car feels to us is important. Cup holders evoke a feeling of comfort and this can be the first item that prospective buyers look for. Plus prospective buyers can be positively influenced by the number of cup holders the car has.

So characteristics such as color, power, overall appearance, styling, and performance are important not for their intrinsic value but for the overall feeling they give the driver/buyer. And quite often, this feeling will over-ride such practical considerations as fuel economy, durability and safety.

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