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The Adolescent Brain

The document discusses risk taking behavior in adolescents. It states that adolescents exhibit higher rates of reckless behavior and sensation seeking compared to other age groups. Many adolescents engage in behaviors like drunk driving, unprotected sex, drug use, and minor crimes. While risky, these behaviors may help adolescents explore adult privileges and accomplish developmental tasks. Most adolescents engage in some risk taking but avoid long-term negative consequences.

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77 views1 page

The Adolescent Brain

The document discusses risk taking behavior in adolescents. It states that adolescents exhibit higher rates of reckless behavior and sensation seeking compared to other age groups. Many adolescents engage in behaviors like drunk driving, unprotected sex, drug use, and minor crimes. While risky, these behaviors may help adolescents explore adult privileges and accomplish developmental tasks. Most adolescents engage in some risk taking but avoid long-term negative consequences.

Uploaded by

alle26
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The adolescent brain and age-related behavioral manifestations

L.P. Spear*
Department of Psychology and Center for Developmental Psychobiology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA
Received 11 May 1999; received in revised form 27 January 2000; accepted 2 February 2000

2.2. Risk taking


“By definition, a transition period such as adolescence is disequilibrating and disrupting and thus replete
with opportunities that are both dangerous and growth enhancing” ([35], p. 98). Adolescents are risk
takers. Relative to individuals at other ages, human adolescents as a group exhibit a disproportionate
amount of reckless behavior, sensation seeking and risk taking (e.g. Ref. [560]) (note: these terms are
not completely synonymous [24], although their distinctions are not critical for the purpose of discussion
here). In one report of 1112 –15 year-olds, 80% exhibited one or more problem behaviors during the
previous month; these behaviors included disobeying parents, school misconduct, substance use and
antisocial behaviors (including theft or fighting) [342]. Indeed, with half or more of adolescents
exhibiting drunk driving, sex without contraception, use of illegal drugs, and minor criminal activities,
“reckless behavior becomes virtually a normative characteristic of adolescent development” ([24], p.
344). Similarly, Moffitt [369] concludes from a review of antisocial behavior in adolescence that it is
statistically aberrant to refrain from such behavior during adolescence, with “actual rates of illegal
behavior soar(ing) so high during adolescence that participation in delinquency appears to be a normal
part of teen life” (p. 675).
Unfortunately, risk taking by definition carries with it some potential for negative outcome. Along with
increases in adolescent risk taking is a sizeable increase in mortality rate from early to late adolescence
[255,256], with homicides, suicides and accidents collectively accounting for more than 85% of all
adolescent deaths [254]. Other potential negative outcomes from adolescent risk taking include
incarceration, AIDS infection, unwanted pregnancy, and alcohol or drug dependence. Risk taking
escalates in some instances into a deviant lifestyle characterized by continued involvement in criminal
activities and problem behaviors in adulthood [318]. Fortunately, however, adolescent experimentation
in risk taking is transient for most individuals, with the vast majority of adolescents surviving
the lottery for negative outcome they enter by engaging in risk taking.
Albeit hazardous, risk taking during adolescence may have some benefits. Risk taking may allow the
adolescent to explore adult behavior and privileges [495], to accomplish normal developmental tasks
[377], and to develop and express mastery of hierarchal challenges associated with certain risky
behaviors [107]. Risk taking has sometimes [495] but not always [351] been linked to gains in
selfesteem, perhaps via reinforcement provided for such behavior among peers engaged in similar
activities [271]. Risk takers report that they feel more accepted by peers, and view risk taking as
reinforcing (“fun”) [342]. Interestingly, adolescents experimenting with drug use were found to be
more socially competent both in childhood as well as in adolescence than either frequent users or
abstainers [493], data that prompted Shedler and Block [493] to suggest that occasional drug use during
adolescence may be a manifestation of “developmentally appropriate experimentation.”
Abstainers were characterized as anxious, overcontrolled, emotionally constricted, and lacking in social
skills, while frequent users were characterized as alienated, distressed and deficient in impulse control
[493]. Thus, some degree of adolescent risk taking is normative, and perhaps adaptive - assuming that
the adolescent moderates the amount of these activities and is fortunate in avoiding potential long-
lasting negative consequences.

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