OH, BEHAVE! : Stifle your road rage.

Recently I read in the news that two thirty-something, middle-class Alabama "ladies" had a murderous road-rage confrontation. The incident took place on a suburban Birmingham highway and ended with one young woman shooting the antagonist who was approaching her car.

When Southern women abandon the good manners and stoic control expected of steel magnolias, the country is in trouble. Who hasn't noticed the increasing number of young female drivers joining the crowds hurtling in and out of traffic, cutting off other motorists at top speed? Obviously, the "emotional intelligence" quotient of the population is sinking fast. "Emotional intelligence" is a new catchword in psychology that refers to the ability to attend to inner emotions, successfully regulate them, and appropriately respond to the emotions of others.

In other words, "emotional intelligence" is a code word for good moral character. Persons can develop emotional competence only by enacting freely willed choices of moral self-restraint. Because we have free will, we are morally responsible for our emotional behavior as well as for our words and deeds. Regulating emotional displays is a universal obligatory task for everyone who grows up as a civilized being. Granted, it is harder for those individuals who inherit difficult temperaments to overcome them. It is hard to be born shy or irritably quick on the trigger. But everyone, even the "easy to rear," happy, extroverted child, has to learn emotional self-control. Only a toddler can be morally excused for "emotional hijackings." A baby can't help having her conscious self-control flooded by emotional storms; but grown-ups without brain damage or mental illness can help themselves.

The old idea that people are puppets, controlled by deep unconscious forces or past conditioning, is receding. The Handbook of Mental Control (Prentice Hall, 1993) has twenty-six research articles devoted to self- control of emotions, mood, memory, thoughts, and behavior. Unimpaired, adult human beings can imagine alternatives to events, and thereby are free to choose between different responses.

Even though emotions often arise from nonconscious stimuli, they can be regulated. Some change, perceived in the internal or outer environment, stimulates an emotional response, but the process is so rapid that many emotions appear to come out of the blue. Like our sense perceptions, emotions are automatic, embodied responses that give us information about the inner and outer environment, especially the interpersonal environment. They give us tacit information and prepare us for action. Certain instantaneous fears, of snakes or large animals, may be built in by evolution to help us survive predators. Other secondary or learned social emotions are more complex and involve cognitive meanings.

Still, even the most primitive emotions can be regulated. The experience of soldiers advancing into battle demonstrates the control of fear. They don't run away because they feel attachment to their units and want to avoid the shame and guilt of cowardice. Group support and group social pressure help humans control their emotions. Road rage may be prevalent because a driver is isolated within the automobile and cannot see or hear other drivers face-to-face. Pedestrians usually don't act so aggressively, and behave themselves in crowds-at least in a crowd that has not degenerated into a mob.

A person driving a vehicle must concentrate on controlling and responding to it. People studying road rage hypothesize that drivers symbolically fuse their identity with their vehicle. Driving to a destination is part of a personally planned goal. Thus, an interruption or frustration in traffic becomes a disruption and a personal affront. Because the driver is isolated, there is no cloud of witnesses to restrain the operator's emotional expression. Hence the frequency of loud exclamations, curses, and obscene gestures. But the need to escape from isolating passivity may also explain why angry drivers so often stop their cars, jump out, and confront others. Not long ago there was a report of a young man who pulled an older man from his car and beat him up, because he was driving too slowly.

Should this young man's lawyer mount a road-rage defense? Nonsense. Crimes of passion have too long been tolerated because of the romantic myth that emotions cannot be controlled. Such beliefs have allowed persons to indulge in, and excuse, wild, immoral behavior. Human beings can control their emotions. The instantaneous involuntary facial, postural, gestural, and vocal responses that constitute emotional responses can be suppressed by acts of will. I do not bare my teeth, howl, and attack an offending dinner partner; indeed, we are all quite skilled in employing social deception. Better still, if one refuses to act on an emotional impulse, exaggerate its expression, and invest energy in sustaining the emotion, the conscious feeling will eventually dissipate. Acute emotions arise and fade following certain distinct patterns. Every episode of tears eventually comes to an end.

In my common-sense upbringing, we were not allowed to "pout," "sulk," "wallow in misery," or "cry in our beer." When feeling low we were instructed to stand up straight, smile cheerfully, and get on with it. "It" was preferably some task we had been procrastinating. Of course, modern sophisticates can work out, do their yoga breathing, meditate, take power naps, eat power bars, or, in desperation, pop a pill. Ancient strategies of self-control are revived in self-help literature. Those things we do not mentally focus on, or invest with attention, lose their power to overwhelm and control consciousness. "Letting go" and "not sweating the small stuff" bring calm. What you decide to attend to determines your state of mind and your actions. With repeated voluntary acts certain responses become habitual. Great saints have made millions of micro decisions that then result in their spontaneous acts of love. Violent offenders in road-rage incidents have repeatedly excused their angry outbursts.

Since we can carry on conversations with others, we can talk to ourselves and employ another strategy for emotional self-control. Self-commands such as "stop this stupid, childish reaction this minute," can produce results. Of course we don't want to completely deny the emotions we feel because we need to be in touch with our emotions to receive the tacit information that they bring. Self-care and self-regulation depend on accurate readings of vital signs. But sometimes, indeed much too often, the information received from an emotional response confirms the existence of personal reservoirs of selfishness and pride. A grandiose sense of entitlement continually springs up and has to be cut down. We may have to employ the full range of emotional control strategies: Re- imagine the great narratives, remember past commitments, and call to mind love's gift. In a word, grow up. Banish that inner child, especially from the driver's seat.