Why are adolescents more likely to make Bad Decisions?

one of society’s great concerns is risk taking in adolescents. Compared to older adults, adolescents are more likely to engage in risky sexual be- havior, abuse drugs and alcohol, and drive recklessly. such poor adolescent choices are the leading cause of death in adolescence and can lead to a lifetime of suffering due to such things as failed education, destroyed personal relationships, and addic- tion to cigarettes, alcohol, and other drugs. This has been a subject of a great deal of research (e.g., Fischhoff, 2008; Reyna & Farley, 2006), and the results are a bit surprising. Con- trary to common belief, adolescents do not perceive themselves to be any more invulnerable than older adults do and often perceive greater danger from risky behavior than do older adults. Also in many laboratory stud- ies, late adolescents often show as good or better performance as older adults on abstract tasks of reasoning and decision making. Thus,
■ When there is no clear basis for making a decision, people are influenced by the way in which the problem is framed.
it does not appear that adolescents are poorer thinkers about risk than older adults. Rather, it appears that the explanation involves two classes of factors:
1. knowledge and experience
Adolescents lack some of the information that adults have. For instance, adolescents may know it is important to “prac- tice safe sex” but not know all that they should about how to practice safe sex. Also, through experience adults have become experts on reasoning about risk. Reyna and Farley argue that adults don’t think through the potential costs and benefits of a risky behavior, but rather they simply recognize the risk and avoid the situation—just as the chess masters discussed in Chapter 9 could recognize the risk of a potential chess posi- tion. In contrast, adolescents often have to try to reason through the consequences of a situation, much as a chess duffer does, and can make errors in reasoning.
2. Different values and situations
Risky behavior has benefits such as immediate pleasure, and adolescents value these benefits more. Adolescents are particularly likely to weigh the benefits of risky behavior heavily in the context of their peers, where social acceptance is at stake. Thus their utilities in computing expected value are different. Reyna and Farley spec- ulate that this is related to the fact that brain regions like the ventromedial prefrontal cortex continue to mature into the early 20s. Fischhoff also notes that risky behavior often arises when adolescents attempt to establish independence and personal competence, which are important to achieve. How- ever, this can put adolescents in situations where older adults seldom find themselves. If adults found themselves in similar situations, they might find themselves also acting in a more risky manner.