Risk Taking in Adolescence: What Changes and Why?
This article reprints a presentation on risk taking in adolescence. The author makes the case that the greater likelihood of risk-taking in adolescence is not due to age differences in risk perception or appraisal, but to age differences in psychosocial factors that influence self-regulation. The author uses a variety of risk-taking behaviors, including risky driving, to illustrate his hypothesis. Risky driving is a group activity in adolescence and teenagers are more likely to drive in groups than are adults. The author argues that adolescence is a period of heightened vulnerability to risk taking because of a disjunction between novelty and sensation seeking (both of which increase dramatically at puberty) and the development of self-regulatory competence (which does not fully mature until early adulthood). This disjunction is biologically driven, normative, and unlikely to be remedied through educational interventions designed to change adolescents' perception, appraisal, or understanding of risk. Instead, interventions should focus on reducing the harm associated with risk-taking behavior.
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Authors:
- Steinberg, Laurence
- Publication Date: 2004
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Print
- Features: References;
- Pagination: pp 51-58
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Serial:
- Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
- Volume: 1021
- Publisher: New York Academy of Sciences
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Adolescents; Automobile driving; Cognition; Risk assessment; Risk taking
- Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01003443
- Record Type: Publication
- Files: TRIS
- Created Date: Aug 31 2005 8:33AM