Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal of Clinical Psychology Research, cilt.10, sa.2, ss.116-126, 2026 (Scopus, TRDizin)
When examining the causes of motor vehicle crashes, the fact that driver-related factors are at the forefront makes it reasonable to investigate the driver behavior in improving traffic safety. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationships between mindful driving attitudes, prefrontal cortex functions, trait mindfulness and driver behaviors. A total of 528 drivers (62.9% male and 36.9 female) who have been actively driving for the past year participated in the study. The assessment instruments were: Sociodemographic Form, Mindful Driving Attitudes Scale (MDAS), Driver Behavior Scale (DBQ), Prefrontal Cortex Functions Scale (PCFS) and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire-Short Form (FFMQ-S). Path analysis was conducted to identfy the pathways from mindfulness to positive and negative driver behaviors. The results showed that the fit of the data to the model was quite good. In other words, while mindfulness predicts prefrontal functions, prefrontal functions predict mindful driving attitudes, and mindful driving attitudes significantly predict positive and aberrant driver behaviors. In addition, the sequential mediating effects of other variables from mindfulness to positive and abberrant driver behaviors were also found to be significant. In other words, prefrontal cortex functions and mindful driving attitudes significantly mediate the path from mindfulness to aberrant driver behaviors. Also, prefrontal cortex functions and mindful driving attitudes significantly mediate the path from mindfulness to positive driver behaviors. These findings suggest that a driver candidate training enriched with mindfulness practices could be used to train safer drivers.