Adolescents’ risk-taking behavior is driven by tolerance to ambiguity
- 16 October 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 109 (42), 17135-17140
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1207144109
Abstract
Adolescents engage in a wide range of risky behaviors that their older peers shun, and at an enormous cost. Despite being older, stronger, and healthier than children, adolescents face twice the risk of mortality and morbidity faced by their younger peers. Are adolescents really risk-seekers or does some richer underlying preference drive their love of the uncertain? To answer that question, we used standard experimental economic methods to assess the attitudes of 65 individuals ranging in age from 12 to 50 toward risk and ambiguity. Perhaps surprisingly, we found that adolescents were, if anything, more averse to clearly stated risks than their older peers. What distinguished adolescents was their willingness to accept ambiguous conditions—situations in which the likelihood of winning and losing is unknown. Though adults find ambiguous monetary lotteries undesirable, adolescents find them tolerable. This finding suggests that the higher level of risk-taking observed among adolescents may reflect a higher tolerance for the unknown. Biologically, such a tolerance may make sense, because it would allow young organisms to take better advantage of learning opportunities; it also suggests that policies that seek to inform adolescents of the risks, costs, and benefits of unexperienced dangerous behaviors may be effective and, when appropriate, could be used to complement policies that limit their experiences.Keywords
This publication has 45 references indexed in Scilit:
- Adolescents’ heightened risk-seeking in a probabilistic gambling taskCognitive Development, 2010
- A time of change: Behavioral and neural correlates of adolescent sensitivity to appetitive and aversive environmental cuesBrain and Cognition, 2010
- Neural Representation of Subjective Value Under Risk and AmbiguityJournal of Neurophysiology, 2010
- Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity AversionJournal of the European Economic Association, 2009
- A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-takingDevelopmental Review, 2008
- The Adolescent BrainAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2008
- Violations of the betweenness axiom and nonlinearity in probabilityJournal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1994
- Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS Scales.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994
- Accident risk and risk-taking behaviour among young driversAccident Analysis & Prevention, 1986
- Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage AxiomsThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1961