Risk Taking in Adolescence

TLDR

Psychologists have long struggled to explain why adolescents and young adults take more risks than other age groups, noting that this tendency is not driven by irrationality, delusions of invulnerability, or ignorance. The paper proposes a developmental neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk taking. It argues that a temporal mismatch between puberty‑driven thrill seeking and the slower maturation of cognitive control creates a window of heightened vulnerability to risk. The perspective explains the limited success of educational interventions and suggests that modifying the contexts of risky behavior may be more effective than altering adolescents' beliefs about risk.

Abstract

Trying to understand why adolescents and young adults take more risks than younger or older individuals do has challenged psychologists for decades. Adolescents' inclination to engage in risky behavior does not appear to be due to irrationality, delusions of invulnerability, or ignorance. This paper presents a perspective on adolescent risk taking grounded in developmental neuroscience. According to this view, the temporal gap between puberty, which impels adolescents toward thrill seeking, and the slow maturation of the cognitive-control system, which regulates these impulses, makes adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability for risky behavior. This view of adolescent risk taking helps to explain why educational interventions designed to change adolescents' knowledge, beliefs, or attitudes have been largely ineffective, and suggests that changing the contexts in which risky behavior occurs may be more successful than changing the way adolescents think about risk.