Sidewalk Rage: Mental Illness or 'Altruistic Punishment?'

TIME via Yahoo News ^ | Feb 21, 2011 | MAIA SZALAVITZ

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For many residents of New York City, our bodies are our cars. So rather than engaging in "road rage" against slow or erratic drivers on a highway, New Yorkers descend into "sidewalk rage," paroxysms of fury directed at people who exhibit irrational, obstructive walking behavior on Manhattan's crowded concrete. But is this reaction a sign of mental illness - or could it perhaps reflect an evolutionary adaptation that may have enabled the development of cooperation? (More on Time.com: Five Ways to Stop Stressing)

I will admit personally to fits of pique when slow tourists fail to keep to the right, or insist on standing side-by-side on escalators, blocking the left-hand fast lane, like some of those described in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

That article came down on the side of sidewalk rage as psychiatric disorder. Shirley Wang writes:

Researchers say the concept of "sidewalk rage" is real. One scientist has even developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to map out how people express their fury. At its most extreme, sidewalk rage can signal a psychiatric condition known as "intermittent explosive disorder," researchers say. On Facebook, there's a group called "I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head" that boasts nearly 15,000 members.

For the rare folks who act out in dangerous ways, sidewalk or road rage may indeed signal illness. But the idea raises the much more interesting question of why so many otherwise normal people also feel the same intense emotion when navigating around slow hordes - and have to temper their impulses to act on their anger - in the first place.

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After the light, she got off the texting and into the right lane. Drove normally after that.

And like Mr Magoo, she probably had no clue of the danger she narrowly escaped.

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That Prius driver is going to be the one doing the rolling roadblock to enforce conservation on the other drivers.