A Process Model of Adolescent Risk Taking Behavior

描述（由申请人提供）：无数的负面健康结果植根于青春期做出的危险决定，如性传播疾病，药物滥用和交通事故等。这项拟议中的研究旨在阐明青少年冒险行为的一些情境和生理基础。Steinberg（2007年; 2008）假设青少年比成年人承担更多的风险，因为他们的社会情感和认知控制系统之间的不平衡。社会情感系统在青春期成熟，导致从童年到青春期的奖励寻求增加。然而，认知控制系统在青少年时期持续成熟，导致青少年对冒险的成本不太敏感。本研究旨在探讨社会评价性威胁的体验是否会加剧社会情绪和认知控制系统之间的失衡。这项研究将是第一个直接探讨社会评价威胁的影响，即使同伴压力，一种社会评价，已与青少年的风险承担增加。将测量生理反应，以检查社会评价威胁对冒险行为影响的潜在生物学机制。这种方法避免了与自我报告相关的潜在扭曲，例如印象形成和社会规范遵守。本研究计划的主要假设是：（1）。社会评价威胁的体验会通过增加对报酬的关注而减少对成本的关注来增加风险行为; 2）生理威胁反应将介导社会评价性威胁和冒险之间的联系，使得生理威胁反应将导致更多的冒险。然后将探索潜在的主持人。由于男性往往比女性承担更多的风险（Byrnes，Schafer，&米勒，1999），性别的影响将被检查。年龄的影响将被探讨，因为认知控制系统的成熟，整个青春期到成年。此外，这项研究发现，生理威胁反应导致更多的风险行为增加，种族可能成为一个重要的调节因素，因为非洲裔美国人往往经历更多的生活压力，患高血压的风险比欧洲裔美国人更大（安德森，1989）。迄今为止，旨在减少青少年冒险行为的方法，如教育和禁欲计划，由于缺乏对青少年冒险原因的理解，在很大程度上都是不成功的。通过确定青少年风险行为的根本原因，这项研究将有助于通过鼓励基于治疗原因而不是冒险症状的干预策略的发展来改善健康结果。 公共卫生相关性：青少年冒险行为对健康有着深远的负面影响，制定干预策略的努力在很大程度上没有成功，因为研究尚未确定青少年冒险行为的根本原因。目前的工作旨在阐明青少年冒险的情境和生物基础。如果研究人员了解为什么青少年会冒险，就可以开发成功的干预措施来治疗风险行为的原因，而不是花费资源治疗症状。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Myriad negative health outcomes are rooted in risky decisions made during adolescence, such as sexually transmitted disease, drug abuse, and vehicular accidents to name a few. The proposed research seeks to shed light on some of the situational and physiological underpinnings of adolescent risk taking behavior. Steinberg (2007; 2008) posits that adolescents take more risks than adults because of an imbalance between their socio-emotional and cognitive-control systems. The socio-emotional system matures at puberty, leading to increased reward-seeking from childhood to adolescence. However, the cognitive-control system continues maturing through adolescence into young adulthood, causing adolescents to be less sensitive to the costs associated with taking risks. The proposed work explores whether the experience of social evaluative threat exacerbates the imbalance between the socio-emotional and cognitive-control systems. This research will be the first to directly explore the impact of social evaluative threat, even though peer pressure, a type of social evaluation, has been linked to increased risk taking in adolescents. Physiological reactivity will be measured in an effort to examine the underlying biological mechanism(s) of the effect of social evaluative threat on risk taking. This method circumvents potential distortions associated with self-reports, such as impression formation and social norm adherence. The primary hypotheses of this research plan are: 1.) the experience of social evaluative threat will increase risky behavior by increasing attention to rewards while decreasing attention to costs, and 2.) physiological threat responses will mediate the link between social evaluative threat and risk taking, such that physiological threat responses will lead more risk taking. Potential moderators will then be explored. Because males tend to take more risks than females (Byrnes, Schafer, & Miller, 1999), the effects of sex will be examined. Age effects will be explored because the cognitive-control system matures throughout adolescence into adulthood. Furthermore, this work finds physiological threat reactions lead to more increased risk behavior, race may emerge as a significant moderator because African-Americans tend to experience more life stress and are at greater risk for hypertension than European-Americans (Anderson, 1989). To date, approaches designed to reduce adolescent risk taking, such as education and abstinence programs, have largely been unsuccessful because of a lack of understanding why adolescents take risks. By identifying the underlying causes of adolescent risk behavior, this research will help improve health outcomes by encouraging the development of intervention strategies based on treating the causes rather than the symptoms of risk taking. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Adolescent risk taking has a profound negative health impact, and efforts to develop intervention strategies have largely been unsuccessful because research has yet to identify the underlying causes of adolescent risk behavior. The current work seeks to shed some light on the situational and biological underpinnings of adolescent risk taking. If researchers understand why adolescents take risks, successful interventions can be developed to treat the causes of risk behavior rather than expending resources treating symptoms.