Abstract
Social neurodevelopmental imbalance models posit that peer presence causes heightened adolescent risk-taking particularly during early adolescence. Evolutionary theory suggests that these effects would be most pronounced in males. However, the small but growing number of experimental studies on peer presence effects in adolescent risky decision-making showed mixed findings, and the vast majority of such studies did not test for the above-described gender and adolescent phase moderation effects. Moreover, most of those studies did not assess the criterion validity of the employed risky decision-making tasks. The current study was designed to investigate the abovementioned hypotheses among a sample of 327 ethnically-diverse Dutch early and mid-adolescents (49.80% female; Mage = 13.61). No main effect of peer presence on the employed risky-decision making task (i.e., the stoplight game) was found. However, the results showed a gender by peer presence moderation effect. Namely, whereas boys and girls engaged in equal levels of risks when they completed the stoplight game alone, boys engaged in more risk-taking than girls when they completed this task together with two same-sex peers. In contrast, adolescent phase did not moderate peer presence effects on risk-taking. Finally, the results showed that performance on the stoplight game predicted self-reported real-world risky traffic behavior, alcohol use and delinquency. Taken together, using a validated task, the present findings demonstrate that individual differences (i.e., gender) can determine whether the social environment (i.e., peer presence) affect risk-taking in early- and mid-adolescents. The finding that performance on a laboratory risky decision-making task can perhaps help identify adolescents that are vulnerable to diverse types of heightened risk behaviors is an important finding for science as well as prevention and intervention efforts.
Highlights
Most risk behaviors that peak in adolescence occur when adolescents are with their peers (Steinberg 2008)
Whereas social neurodevelopmental imbalance models suggest that such peer presence effects occur during early adolescence (e.g., Crone and Dahl 2012; Somerville et al 2010), evolutionary theory suggests that these effects would be most pronounced in males (Wilson and Daly 1985)
The current study investigated whether such inconsistent results might stem from neglected gender and/ or adolescent phase moderation of peer presence effects on adolescent risk-taking
Summary
Most risk behaviors that peak in adolescence occur when adolescents are with their peers (Steinberg 2008). Most studies on peer influences on adolescent risk-taking do not investigate the direct effect of presence of peers on heightened adolescent risk-taking (see: Defoe et al 2015). Past studies have often focused on similarity in risk-taking behaviors among peers, with the assumed mechanism being social learning (e.g., Haynie and Osgood 2005). A small but growing number of experimental studies have investigated this hypothesized peer presence effect on adolescent risky decision making (e.g., de Boer et al 2017; Gardner and Steinberg 2005; Somerville et al 2019). The current study adds to the literature by investigating the abovedescribed peer presence effects on risky decision making
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