United Press International - November 14, 2006
Leah Carliner, UPI Correspondent

In fact, adolescents are more likely to consider risk-taking activities based on a cost-benefit analysis than adults are, according to research reported in the latest issue of Psychological Science.

One of the lead researchers, Valerie F. Reyna, said that her report, a review of previous studies, shows that adolescents are actually over-calculating the risks of their decisions before engaging in behavior.

Adults, however, don't even consider risky actions and simply know to avoid them, said Reyna, a characteristic that is also reflected in the growth of the brain: As you mature, you are less likely to calculate risk, she said.

"When the adolescent brain changes ... one of the surprising things is that parts of the brain are being pruned," said Reyna, which is biological evidence that adults are less likely to consider risk, she said.

Julie Downs, director of the Center for Risk Perception and Communication, said that adults have an easier time making risk assessments because they have a clearer understanding of the situation, not because adults are inherently better at making decisions.

"I think to say that adults are somehow better (at assessing risk) is missing a lot of the nuances that are going on in these risk behaviors," she said.

According to Downs, society is over-amplifying the risks of certain activities in an attempt to frighten adolescents into avoiding certain behaviors. In actuality, when teens see their peers engaging in risky behaviors with few negative outcomes, their judgment becomes skewed.

"There's been decades of messages from teachers and parents and public officials about all these risks," said Downs, "but they're not technically true."

Society withholds a lot of information from teens, hoping that the scare factor will make them turn away from risky behavior, said Downs, but it is a disservice to keep adolescents in the dark.

"Really it's not about risk," she said. "It's that we don't want our kids to have sex because we think it's morally wrong."

Both Downs and Reyna agreed that the way adolescents are currently being educated about risk is not effective, but the road ahead is not clear either. Educating teens on risk is a process that is going to have to be done on an individual basis, they said.

"These findings suggest that the fundamental assumption ... for how we intervene is false," said Reyna.

"It's really a question of identification of different subtypes of adolescents," she said, and not all can be treated in the same way.

According to Reyna, there are three different types of adolescents: those who over calculate risk, those who don't calculate risk, and those who avoid risk, similar to adults.

All three must be considered differently, she said.

"Some kids have a lot of information and maybe they are just missing some key facts," said Downs. Other kids have no information and need a more thorough education, she said.

Downs said that without nuanced information, adolescents are incapable of using good judgment.

"They think that they know something about the symptoms of HIV and they think their partner doesn't have it, and by and large they're right," said Downs, because a small percentage of teens in this country are HIV positive, she said.

But, said Downs, they don't know anything about less threatening sexually transmitted diseases like Chlamydia.

Downs said that it is not surprising that Reyna's results conclude that adolescents are over-calculating risks, "because we've been screaming at them that they're going to die."

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