The Effect of Active and Passive Peer Discouragement on Adolescent Risk taking: An Experimental Study

Abstract

This experiment investigated the effect of peer discouragement on adolescent risk taking. Overall, 269 Dutch adolescents aged 11-15 years completed a risk taking computer task in the presence of an e-confederate who demonstrated very little risk taking (passive peer discouragement) and/or sent risk-discouraging messages to participants (active peer discouragement). The results showed that, compared to a situation with no peer discouragement, adolescents took significantly less risk only when they encountered a combination of active and passive peer discouragement; hence, when peers practiced what they preached. No gender differences were found in the effect of passive and active peer discouragement on risk taking. The results showed that digital peer messages play a promising role in diminishing adolescent risk taking.

Peers and offender decision‐making

“…The most promising studies in this regard are studies on the effect of online and offline messages from peers on individual risk‐taking in behavioral lab tasks. Thus far, these studies have been mainly focused on decision outcomes rather than on how dialogue could alter perceptions and preferences (Cavalca et al., ; De Boer & Harakeh, ; MacLean, Geier, Henry, & Wilson, ; Pfeffer & Hunter, ; Reynolds, MacPherson, Schwartz, Fox, & Lejuez, ).…”

The effect of active and passive peer encouragement on adolescent risk‐taking

“…The participants had to complete the BART (Lejuez et al, 2007;Lejuez, Aklin, Zvolensky, & Pedulla, 2003;Lejuez et al, 2002) on the computer simultaneously with a digital unfamiliar peer (a fictitious person, also called an e-confederate). The design in our experiment was similar to the design in a recent experimental study that investigated the effects of active and passive discouragement on adolescent risk-taking (De Boer & Harakeh, 2017). The participants were randomly distributed across the following four conditions: neutral (no updates/ messages received but e-confederate present), passive (two updates received about the number of pumps of the e-confederate), active (two risk-encouraging messages received from the e-confederate) and combined (two updates and two messages were received from the e-confederate).…”

“…The content of the updates in the passive condition was based on the study of MacLean et al (2014) while frequency of the updates was the same as that used in the study of De Boer and Harakeh (2017). In the study of MacLean et al (2014), the participants received an update for every single balloon, but in our study, this was impossible because in the active peer influence condition, they would not receive a message for every balloon, making the comparison of the relative importance of the influence mechanisms difficult.…”

“…The content of the messages in the active condition was also based on the existing studies (i.e., De Boer & Harakeh, 2017;MacLean et al, 2014). The e-confederate sent the following two messages: 1) "If I were you, I wouldn't worry about the balloon exploding and just give the balloon lots of pumps!!…”

When Do those “Risk-Taking Adolescents” Take Risks? The Combined Effects of Risk Encouragement by Peers, Mild-to-Borderline Intellectual Disability and Sex

“…Indeed, the peer context is related to adolescent risk taking in daily life, as demonstrated by the doubled risk of fatal injuries during driving accompanied by peers (Chen et al 2000). Several experimental studies also demonstrate that the (perceived) presence of peers increases risk taking (De Boer and Harakeh 2017;Gardner and Steinberg 2005;Maclean et al 2014;Van Hoorn et al 2017;Weigard et al 2014). However, adolescents vary in their susceptibility to peer influence on risk taking.…”