Title: Study Shows Why Adolescents Are More Likely Than Adults to Engage in Risky and Impulsive Behavior
Headings: Study Shows Why Adolescents Are More Likely Than Adults to Engage in Risky and Impulsive Behavior
Study Shows Why Adolescents Are More Likely Than Adults to Engage in Risky and Impulsive Behavior
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Content: The findings show that, relative to children and adults, adolescents are less interested in information that would help them to gauge the risks of their behavior. They are less motivated to seek out such information and better able to tolerate a lack of knowledge. “ It’s not that they are cognitively incapable of processing the issues. They are simply driven to seek new experiences and try out new things,” says lead author Wouter van den Bos, researcher in the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The patterns of adolescent risk-taking behaviors observed in previous experimental studies deviate sharply from those seen in real life. In these earlier laboratory experiments, participants were often given all the information they needed to make a decision. When adolescents test their luck by experimenting with drugs or having unprotected sex, however, they may have only a vague idea of the possible consequences of their actions and the likelihoods of those consequences. But they often have the opportunity to learn more about those consequences before making a decision—metaphorically speaking, they can look before they leap. “ Ours was the first developmental study to use experimental tasks that afforded decision makers this opportunity to reduce uncertainty by searching for more information,” adds van den Bos. In the study, 105 children, adolescents, and young adults aged 8–22 years old played various lotteries, each offering a chance of winning a certain amount of money.