9.4: Decision-Making and Risky Behaviors in Adolescence
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Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Describe the brain regions that govern adolescent risk perception and reward-seeking behaviors
- Describe adolescents’ decision-making in comparison to adults’ decision-marking
- Describe the prevalence and types of common risky behaviors in adolescence
Kesavan is a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore, and he’s feeling a new sense of optimism about his social life. It’s Friday night, and he’s excited to make the most of his extended curfew, which is now until 11 p.m. When his parents ask about his plans, Kesavan says he’s planning to see the latest action film with some friends and maybe hang out at the fast food place around the corner. In reality, his friends will pick him up, and they will attend a keg party thrown by high school seniors. Kesavan doesn’t think he’ll drink at the party, but if he does, he’ll need some breath mints before heading home. He’s also hoping that the party is not busted by the cops and that no one drinks and drives.
Kesavan is making a set of decisions that could have lasting effects on his health, safety, legal record, family relationships, and social standing. He weighs the pros and cons of different options, considering both the social and emotional aspects of the situation, like the excitement and nervousness of being at a keg party. Adolescent decision-making is complex, largely driven by emotions and pleasure-seeking behaviors, and often lacks a clear assessment of consequences.
Decision-Making, Risk-Taking, and Rewards
As you’ve learned, significant growth in brain structures influences the cognitive developments of adolescence, and these changes impact individuals’ risk perception, emotion regulation, and decision-making capabilities. In particular, the frontal lobe and limbic systems are not fully mature in adolescence. The frontal lobe supports rational decision-making, planning, emotion regulation, and impulse control. The limbic system—a collection of structures active in memory formation, emotion processing, and sensory integration—contains the brain’s reward center that is important in teen growth.
Teen decision-making is often characterized by a balance between risk-taking and reward-seeking behaviors. Adolescents tend to be more sensitive to potential rewards and less sensitive to potential risks compared to adults. And, at its most basic level, decision-making consists of choosing a course of action from several possibilities (Fischhoff & Broomell, 2020; Hardman, 2009). Rational decision-making requires assessing the levels of risk and reward and weighing the probability of one against the likelihood of the other. Teens often take more risks than adults, because they weigh risks and rewards differently than adults do (Gillespie, 2019).
Adolescents are more sensitive to reward cues in their environment than are children or adults (Andersen, 2016). For example, in a study examining the response to monetary rewards, researchers found that adolescents showed significantly greater activation in the nucleus accumbens, a key brain region involved in reward processing, compared to both children and adults (Becker et al., 2023). The nucleus accumbens is connected to both the hippocampus and the amygdala and is considered the brain’s reward center. As brain development occurs, adolescents are likely to have less activation in this reward center of the brain; this, in turn, will reduce risky decision-making as they mature in adulthood.
Development of the limbic system also makes peer relationships more intriguing to teens and is associated with increased novelty seeking, leading teens to continually seek out new and intriguing experiences that may bring reward (or risk) (Steinberg, 2008). The limbic system develops earlier than the prefrontal cortex , making early and middle adolescence a particularly vulnerable time for teens because this is the period of the greatest mismatch in the developmental timeline, resulting in a window of vulnerability for increased risk-taking (Andrews et al., 2021; Steinberg, 2008). For instance, a sixteen-year-old’s propensity to skateboard without a helmet or to accept risky dares from friends most likely reflects limbic system activation leading to pleasure-seeking behaviors and response to peer pressure rather than a desire to incur injury from risk. Essentially, an adolescent’s brain has a fully developed reward center providing plenty of dopamine, also known as a “feel good” hormone, but does not have the fully developed prefrontal cortex to keep those feelings under control.
Link to Learning
Risk-taking is not always a negative. While there are unhealthy risks that teens may pursue, risks are also a part of healthy growth and development. Adults should recognize that risks foster growth and learning and support teens through those experiences.
Adolescents are especially sensitive to rewards. The neurotransmitter dopamine helps transmit signals in the reward circuits of the brain. During adolescence, dopamine activity increases significantly. This increase actually makes rewarding activities less satisfying because the brain already has a relatively larger amount of dopamine. As a result, to experience the same amount of “feel good” reward from an activity that an adult might, adolescents seek out more novel experiences (Steinberg, 2008) and often higher-risk experiences. This can lead adolescents to be more likely to take bigger risks when driving, making decisions related to sexual behaviors, or making decisions regarding substance use (Khurana et al., 2015; Spear, 2013). In a variety of activities, teens are more likely to seek out more rewarding activities, even when those highly rewarding activities also come with risks. For example, it might be quite a thrill to steal a shopping cart from a grocery store, climb inside it, and have your friends push you down a road, but this decision also entails the possibility of sustaining physical injury and getting into trouble with law enforcement (Figure 9.11). For the developing teenager seeking stimulation and reward, however, riding in the shopping cart may be irresistible in the moment.
Another important influence on risk-taking behavior is teenagers’ heightened interest in the social world. The pubertal changes of adolescence have many effects, including increasing the relevance of the hormone oxytocin, a chemical messenger that contributes to the formation of attachment and social relationships. Oxytocin is linked to fostering peer interactions and social support among teenagers. Higher levels of oxytocin have been associated with greater trust, cooperation, and prosocial behavior toward peers (He et al., 2018). In adolescence, oxytocin levels, along with rapid development of the brain’s social and emotional processing areas, means that social features of the environment take on greater importance and impact in adolescent decision-making (Anderson, 2023; Gillespie, 2019). In fact, approval from peers becomes as meaningful as any type of nonsocial reward, such as money or a favorite food. This social influence combined with the desire to seek greater sources of reward helps explain why teens make the decisions they do (Steinberg, 2008).
Teens take risks not because they’re incapable of complex hypothetical and deductive reasoning; they are perfectly capable of imagining the consequences of various choices they might make. In fact, researchers have found no real differences between adults and adolescents in their perception of the risk level of their choices (Ivers et al., 2009; Knoll et al., 2017). What’s different is that in considering the trade-offs, adolescents pay more attention to the possible rewards than to the risks, even more so when the rewards have a social element involving peer approval.
This is a critical distinction to make because it suggests that educational programs that aim to increase an adolescent’s awareness of how risky things may be will not help. Adolescents in a classroom setting can think in sophisticated ways about complex situations, carefully weighing the pros and cons (e.g., Steinberg, 2015). It’s when these same adolescents step into a nuanced everyday situation, combined with peer influence, that their risk threshold and decision-making may be different. Adolescents know the risks quite well, it’s just not how they are making decisions in the moment.
Link to Learning
Young scholar Kashfia Rahman became intrigued during her own teenage years about why some adolescents could be extremely “smart” but engage in high-risk behaviors that don’t seem smart. Listen to Kashfia Rahman discuss her research process and findings on teenagers’ risk-taking in this TED Talk.
Risky Behaviors
After considering the brain development that underlies adolescents’ decision-making, let’s consider some specific common risky behaviors, such as unsafe driving and substance use.
The YRBSS monitors risky transportation-related behavior. In 2019, 43 percent of youth in the United States reported they did not always wear a seat belt while riding in a car. Nearly 17 percent reported having ridden with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, and 5.4 percent reported having driven when they had been drinking. Texting while driving remains a frequent risky choice, with 39 percent of teens reporting they have texted (or sent emails) while driving.
Teen delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority (i.e., under eighteen years of age in most countries). Overall, delinquency has declined over the past couple decades with only around 34 percent of adolescents reporting engaging in any criminal behavior (Baumer et al., 2017). These behaviors can range from relatively minor offenses such as shoplifting or vandalism to more serious crimes such as drug-related offenses, assault, and theft. Lower parental monitoring, teen-parent conflict, absenteeism, school dropout, poor academic performance, and a disrespectful attitude toward teachers and other school authorities are risk factors for delinquent adolescents (Bendezú et al., 2018; Dong et al., 2015). Furthermore, youth who experience social disadvantage including poverty, dangerous neighborhoods, and child maltreatment, are at an increased risk of juvenile delinquency (De Coster et al., 2022; Vidal et al., 2017). However, interventions with youth that focus on socioemotional well-being have been shown to reduce future offenses in these youth as well (Vidal et al., 2017).
Link to Learning
Should adolescents be tried as adults when they commit a crime? One way developmental psychology can help inform improved care of adolescents is by considering adolescent brain development and the goals of rehabilitation when youth commit crimes. Review this brief video to learn more about the issue.
Substance use among youth is a major public health concern and is associated with several potentially harmful consequences such as an increased risk of addiction. Adolescents who experience certain risk factors, including availability of substances, social disadvantage, poor parent-relationship quality, and higher risk-taking behaviors, are more likely to use substances (Degenhardt et al., 2016). Additionally, studies in the United States and Thailand have found that being male, having poor academic performance, not residing with parents, and having family members and peers engaged in drug use all increase the risk of substance use (Assanangkornchai et al., 2018; Degenhardt et al., 2016).
In 2023, the CDC reported that adolescents are most likely to use alcohol among all drugs, with 22 percent having consumed alcohol in the past month, compared to 17 percent who had used marijuana in the past month. A 2023 CDC survey indicated that approximately 15 percent of middle schoolers and nearly 28 percent of high schoolers had experimented with tobacco at some point.
Adolescent use of illicit drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, has declined over the past couple of years. In 2023, 10 percent of female youth reported such use, as did 10 percent of males. The YRBSS monitors the use of prescription opioids separately and found similar rates of use as for illicit drugs (14 percent of female youth and 9 percent of male youths). From 2021 to 2023, the CDC reported a decline in use of illict drugs and misuse of prescription opioids for Black, White, and Hispanic youth. Meanwhile, there were increases in misuse of prescription opioids and illicit drugs in LGBTQ+ youth. Some research indicates that bullying and victimization experiences predicted a higher risk of drug use for LGBTQ+ youth (e.g., Wheldon et al., 2023).
Broadly, the YRBSS data have shown either no change in drug use or a decline in drug use across all groups and drug use types in high school students since 2019. Some research indicates that the declines in these risky behaviors may be due to adolescents showing less interest in risk-taking behaviors, having less unstructured social time with friends, and changing social norms in the age of risk-taking, which can lead to risk-taking behaviors beginning later in adolescence (Ball et al., 2023). Still other research indicates that the declines may be related to social changes during and following COVID-19, including less time spent with peers and increases in parental supervision (Compton et al., 2023). While these trends are largely encouraging, they do show that some youth are still at high risk of drug use, particularly when they face other contextual risks.
A few studies have shown an association between insufficient sleep and unhealthy risk behaviors including alcohol use, tobacco smoking, marijuana use, and abuse of other illicit/prescription drugs (McKnight-Eily et al., 2011; Winsler et al., 2015). Overall, teens who abuse drugs are also reported to have higher rates of physical and mental illness and reduced overall health and well-being (Schulte et al., 2013).
Link to Learning
Listen to teenager Megan Hanley discuss her personal struggles with alcoholism and her experience with youth.
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