Abstract
In adolescence, there is a heightened propensity to take health risks such as smoking, drinking or driving too fast. Another facet of risk taking, social risk, has largely been neglected. A social risk can be defined as any decision or action that could lead to an individual being excluded by their peers, such as appearing different to one’s friends. In the current study, we developed and validated a measure of concern for health and social risk for use in individuals of 11 years and over (N = 1399). Concerns for both health and social risk declined with age, challenging the commonly held stereotype that adolescents are less worried about engaging in risk behaviours, compared with adults. The rate of decline was steeper for social versus health risk behaviours, suggesting that adolescence is a period of heightened concern for social risk. We validated our measure against measures of rejection sensitivity, depression and risk-taking behaviour. Greater concern for social risk was associated with increased sensitivity to rejection and greater depressed mood, and this association was stronger for adolescents compared with adults. We conclude that social risks should be incorporated into future models of risk-taking behaviour, especially when they are pitted against health risks.
Highlights
Adolescence is a sensitive period of development, characterised by significant changes in both the biological and social environment
We found that concern for health and social risk, and found that concern for both health and social risk decreased people reported greater concern for health risk compared with social risk
We developed a self-report measure of concern for health and social risk for use with adolescents and adults
Summary
Adolescence is a sensitive period of development, characterised by significant changes in both the biological and social environment. Adolescents are stereotyped as risk takers, which is likely due to evidence that risk behaviours, such as binge drinking, risky driving and smoking, are heightened during this period of life [2,3]. Evidence from car accidents shows that, for young drivers, the risk of engaging in a fatal car accident increases with the number of passengers in the car [4]. This is reflected in the experimental literature, with one study finding that, when playing alone, adolescents and adults take a similar number of risks on an incentivised computerised driving task (the stop light task). Not all adolescents take risks, and recent work has led to the suggestion that adolescence is a time of increased sensitivity to risk, characterised by wide variation in risk seeking and risk averse
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