Peers increase adolescent risk taking even when the probabilities of negative outcomes are known.

Smith, Ashley R.; Chein, Jason; Steinberg, Laurence

doi:10.1037/a0035696

Cited by 154 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…16 For example, the temptation for adolescents to engage in high-risk activities can increase when with friends, even if the adolescent is cognitively aware of potential negative consequences. 40 Therefore, although adolescents generally possess more developed EF skills than younger children, they are also required to negotiate more complex contexts that test such skills to a greater degree; the failure of EF skills in such settings may therefore be particularly costly to an adolescent’s health. 41,42 …”

Section: Development Of Efmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive Processes and Pediatric Obesity Interventions

Miller

2016

Pediatric Clinics of North America

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Summary Childhood obesity is a significant problem in the United States, yet current childhood obesity prevention programming approaches have limited efficacy. Self-regulation is a set of processes (e.g., cognitive control, emotion coping) that organize behavior in order to achieve a goal. As such, self-regulation may shape health behaviors and over time, long-term health outcomes. Obesity-prevention approaches that incorporate a focus on the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that underlie self-regulation early in the lifespan may therefore lead to better outcomes. Executive functioning (EF) is a central aspect of self-regulation; skills include attention, working memory, and inhibitory control. Deficits in these areas are associated with higher weight status in children. The current paper reviews the development of EF from childhood to adolescence, identifies social-contextual influences on EF development, presents how different aspects of EF relate to behaviors known to be associated with increased risk for childhood obesity, and considers how EF-weight associations may change across development. Implications for intervention, including the need to consider the direction of association and possibility of bidirectional associations, the multiple potential pathways between EF and weight status, and a brief review of EF-enhancement intervention approaches are discussed.

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Section: Development Of Efmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive Processes and Pediatric Obesity Interventions

Miller

2016

Pediatric Clinics of North America

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“…Specifically, adolescents are more likely to make risky decisions (Gardner and Steinberg, 2005; Smith et al, 2014) and are more sensitive to immediate reward (O’Brien et al, 2011; Weigard et al, 2014) when knowing that they are being observed by peers than when they are alone. It has been suggested that these effects appear because the presence of peers can constitute a social reward that can bias decision making, presumably through the modulation of the reward system in the brain (Chein et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A total of 131 junior high school male students (aged 14–15 years old) performed a roulette task, similar to the one used in a previous study (Smith et al, 2014), implemented on smartphone devices. Participants were presented with a series of roulette wheels showing the probability of gain and loss, and decided whether to ‘play’ or ‘pass’ for each wheel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rank among Peers during Game Competition Affects the Tendency to Make Risky Choices in Adolescent Males

et al. 2017

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It has been shown that adolescents take more risks when they are with peers than when they are alone, presumably because the presence of peers can be a social reward/punishment that can bias decision making. Competition is inherent in peer interactions, and recent work has demonstrated that winning/losing is an intrinsic social reward/punishment. Taken together, it can be hypothesized that competition amongst peers affects adolescents’ risky behavior. While there is much evidence that status amongst peers can relate to antisocial/aggressive behavior, it remains unclear whether risky behavior is affected. Moreover, the degree to which ‘temporary status,’ such as ranking in a short-term competitive game, affects behavior is uncertain, an important issue because adolescents might be sensitive to situations or factors which potentially destabilize existing hierarchies. In this experiment, these issues were directly explored in the classroom environment using smartphone technology and Wi-Fi setup. Male junior high school students (aged 14–15) performed a roulette game task on smartphones, playing either independently or against five classmates. In the latter case, the students’ current ranks within the group of six were constantly presented on smartphone screens. To dissociate the effects of the students’ reactions to ranks from their actual performances, unknown to the students, the ranks presented were actually predetermined so that about half of the students were continuously presented with high ranks whereas the other half were continuously presented with low ranks. We found that the students presented with low ranks made more risky plays than those not presented with ranks or those presented with high ranks. This result suggests that even temporary status significantly affects adolescents’ risky behavior, and also demonstrates the usefulness of smartphones in examining and manipulating peer interactions in classroom experiments.

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“…While the experimental social psychology literature has a multitude of studies that examine peer influence on various behavioral outcomes (see Paternoster et al 2013 for an overview), the outcomes of interest are often not comparable to (minor) delinquent acts. Similarly, developmental research has also conducted studies on the influence of (deviant) peers on risk-taking behavior or risky decision-making behavior (e.g., Gardner and Steinberg 2005;MacLean et al 2014;Smith et al 2014;van Hoorn et al 2016). However, these studies manipulated either the presence of peers or their risk-aversive attitudes, but not their actual deviant behavior.…”

Section: Previous Experimental Research On Peer Deviancymentioning

confidence: 99%

An experimental investigation of the influence of deviant peers on own deviancy: A replication study

et al. 2017

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Objectives This study is a replication of a study examining the causal impact of a brief exposure to deviant peers on own deviant behavior, i.e., Paternoster et al. (Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50:476-503, 2013). This study retested this design using different monetary incentives and a female deviant peer. Methods A total of 69 university students (61% female) from the Netherlands participated in this laboratory-based study (Mage = 20.64; SD = 2.00) under the façade of a study on individual differences predicting memory recall. Participants could earn up to 10 euros. All participants had the opportunity to cheat to illegitimately earn more money (deviancy). Participants in the experimental condition were exposed to a deviant peer who verbalized her intention to cheat, justified this behavior, and then visibly cheated on the memory recall task. Results Although participants in both conditions engaged in some deviancy, the brief exposure to a deviant peer significantly increased the amount of deviancy compared to participants who were not exposed to a deviant peer. These results were consistent after controlling for different demographic and theoretical control variables that predict deviancy. Conclusions Although not identical in magnitude, our results echo those found by Paternoster et al. (2013): Even a brief exposure to a previously unknown deviant peer increases the amount of deviant behavior in young adults. Future research should J Exp Criminol DOI 10.1007/s11292-017-9305-3Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-017-9305-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Peers increase adolescent risk taking even when the probabilities of negative outcomes are known.

Cited by 154 publications

References 9 publications

Neurocognitive Processes and Pediatric Obesity Interventions

Neurocognitive Processes and Pediatric Obesity Interventions

Rank among Peers during Game Competition Affects the Tendency to Make Risky Choices in Adolescent Males

An experimental investigation of the influence of deviant peers on own deviancy: A replication study

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