Moaning men make women bad drivers

London, Mar 29 (UNI) Stop complaining to your wife while she is behind the wheel that women are terrible drivers or else you will make matters worse.

Research found that women who are chided while driving are more than twice as likely to make mistakes as those who have no ''constructive criticism'' from their male passengers.

Even something like a man tutting while a woman carries out a manoeuvre can lead to greater difficulties as women get annoyed by the criticism, it revealed.

Simply telling a woman that men make better drivers was enough to disturb their concentration, it added.

Dr Courtney von Hippel, a psychologist from the University of Queensland in Australia said, ''When people are confronted with negative stereotypes about themselves they seem to experience an extra mental load, which can decrease their performance on a task.'' Out of 168 female students for a computer simulation, half were told the study would investigate why men were better drivers than women, while the other group heard no mention of gender differences but were told the driving task would investigate the mental processes involved in driving, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Nearly half of the drivers in the ''stereotype'' group hit a wandering pedestrian who unexpectedly appeared in the simulation-- more than twice the number in the other group.

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