More handpicked essays just for you.
Adolescent risk taking behavior
Peer pressure influences the choices teenagers make
Adolescent risk taking behavior
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Introduction
Health risks differ across an individual’s life span and one reason for this is that adolescents take more risks than adults and younger children (Taylor & Sirois, 2011). The greatest threat to an adolescents health often come from preventable causes, this can be seen in the fact that adolescents have the highest rates of crime, auto mobile accidents, violence, drug and alcohol use and sexual risk taking than all other age groups (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005). Many of the current risk taking prevention methods such as the DARE program are largely ineffective which suggests that a lot of the current thoughts of risk taking in adolescence is wrong (Taylor & Sirois, 2011). One of the major challenges for psychologists is to try and understand why risk taking is more common in adolescence than in other periods of life. This paper will look at recent studies to help explain why adolescents have high rates of risk taking compared to other age groups looking at the neurodevelopmental side of things and the effect of peer presence on adolescents. It will also try to propose new research directions that can hopefully help decrease risk-taking in adolescents.
The presence of peers has a big effect on the risk taking in adolescents (Albert et al, 2013). A study in 2005 by Gardner and Steinberg examined the effect of peers in risk taking on three age groups; early adolescents, late adolescents and middle aged adults. The participants would participate in a computerized driving “chicken game” in which it would challenge the drivers to get as far around a track as possible while avoiding crashing into a randomized wall that may appear (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005). The computer would randomly choose if there were to be a single p...
... middle of paper ...
...we could reduce risk taking by a lot and ultimately stop the high rate of preventable deaths in adolescents.
Works Cited
Albert, D., Chein, J., & Steinberg, L. (2013). Peer influences on adolescent decision making. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 80-86.
Gardner, M., & Steinberg, L. (2005). Peer influence on risk taking, risk preference, and risky decision making in adolescence and adulthood: An experimental study. Developmental Psychology, 41, 625–635.
Steinberg L. (2007). Risk-taking in adolescence: New perspectives from brain and behavioral science. Current Directions in Psychological Science;16:55–59.
Steinberg, L. (2008). A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk taking. Developmental Review, 28, 78-106.
Taylor, S., & Sirois, F. (2011). Health Psychology: Second Canadian Edition. Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson Higher Education.
Yakusheva, O., Kapinos, K., & Weiss, M. (2011). Peer effects and the freshman 15: Evidence from a natural experiment. Economics & Human Biology, 9(2), 119-132.
One of the most complicated puzzles that have faced our society and you, the parents, is that of the teenage brain. The reason that this has been stumping our heads is because this puzzle isn’t even complete. The adolescent brain is developed from back to front creating many complications for their decisions. This both helps and damages us. With this ability, we have an easier ability to learn new things, easier time adapting to our environment, and we seek new thrilling experiences. The ways this hinders us is that we have bad decision making, emotions controlling our decisions, sensitivity to social and emotional information, and the seeking of immediate rewards. Although a teenager’s brain is not fully
Musher-Eizenman, D. R., Holub, S. C., & Arnett, M. (2003). Attitude and Peer Influences on
Peers are one of the most influential agents in this stage. Your peers could pressure you into very reckless behavior. Peer presure is a very dangerous thing and could lead to an adolecent taking a different path than the one that they wanted. In some cases, however, peer pressure can be beneficial. If you have many peers that are all planning on going to the same college and they have asked you to join, you may feel obligated, or pressured, into doing better in your schooling to receive the grades you need to go to that college. The peers you have can also influence you without using peer pressure. If you have a group of peers that you socialize with on a daily bases, you start to act like them which can help you or hurt you depending on the peers you have chosen to interact with. Another part of the peers that you socialize with, and acting like them, is that those peers are who define you whether you like it or not. The saying You are who you hang with applies to this
In “Why the teen brain is drawn to risk” the author attributes risky/bad teenage behavior to the fact that teenagers actually tend to over-estimate risks and put too much weight on the known risks while they tend to be much more open about unknown risks. The article gave the example of sexual activity leading to HIV. Teenagers when faced with this problem often look at the risk of contracting HIV. Teenagers also have greater tolerance for the uncertain. So where an adult would not do something because of unknown risks a teenager would be more likely to do
Since Beck (1992) claimed that we are now living in a “risk society” there has been an abundance of sociological research surrounding the subject. Most recently the idea of voluntary risk taking has been brought to the fore front of sociological debate. It is clear that in a society where people spend a great deal of time avoiding risks there are also people actively seeking to take part in risks. Why is this the case, and are there certain groups within society more prone to this type of risk-taking behaviour than others?
The peak in risky behavior occurs at about age 17. The rates of risky behavior continue to rise, with a significant increase occurring in the past two decades. Risky behavior in adolescence can have both positive and negative effects. Positive effects risky behavior has during adolescence are individuation, self-determination, and it can create peer acceptance. The tendency to partake in risky behavior during adolescence can be contributed to rapid development of the emotional brain while the cortical areas continue to develop slowly, the need for sensation seeking, beliefs of invulnerability, and deviant behavior demonstrated by
The influence between friends telling others to try some new things like smoking and hanging around the people you don’t know and who they don’t like can cause them peer pressure on others.
Determinants - Social - Youth gambling is strongly influenced by the familial, social and cultural norms to which young people are exposed. (Paul delfabbro & Letitia thrupp, 2003)
If asked most teens would say that they don’t think of the consequences their driving could bring, because if they had then the statistics of fatalities due to car accidents would not be so high. In 1997, according to the US Department of Transportation, 7,885 teens were involved in fatal crashes. They also claim that teen crashes are 4 times the normal rate of accidents. These accidents are occurring because teens tend to take more risks. They drive too fast and usually aren’t paying attention to the r...
During adolescence emotional reactivity is heightened, and the social environment is changing as adolescents spend more time with their peers than adults (Casey, 2008). To an adolescent, the value of positive information, as well as negative information may be exaggerated which leads to greater emotional reactivity and sensitivity during this growth period (Casey, 2008). This can heighten the incidence of addiction and the onset of psychological disorders (Casey, 2008). There are various theories that attempt to explain why adolescents engage in risky behaviour. One of these theories by Yurgelun-Todd stems from human adolescent brain development, and proposes that cognitive development during the adolescent period is associated with increasingly superior efficiency of cognitive control and affective modulation (Casey, 2008). This theory also suggest...
When an individual take on the behaviors, attitudes, and styles of their peers because of the pressure of fitting in, this is peer conformity, also known as peer pressure. In most cultures the amount of time we spend with our peers tends to increase, as well as the effect they provide for support. Peer influence can start as soon as the third grade for some an...
Peer pressure pressures peers in both positive and negative ways, depending on the situation. Peer pressure can display through attitudes, risky behaviors, wicked influences, and substantially through media in everyday life. These influences can occur in a positive way, which are particularly related to school and academics. On the other hand, negative pressure that can result from social media and any individual that may pressure people around them to make destructive choices.
An example of how peers can have more influence then parents from my own life who be when I was in middle school, at the time I was hangout with girls who were not a good influence on me, I know this know but at the time I thought my parents were not wanting me to have friends. Those friends would always be late to school and class, at this school we had seven different classes and had five minutes to get to each c...
To solve the problem, it is said that the numbers of teen crashes has decreased as five years have passed. Taking measurement like the ones show proof that teens aren’t completely reckless like t...