Adolescents' heightened risk-seeking in a probabilistic gambling task

Abstract

This study investigated adolescent males' decision-making under risk, and the emotional response to decision outcomes, using a probabilistic gambling task designed to evoke counterfactually mediated emotions (relief and regret). Participants were 20 adolescents (aged 9-11), 26 young adolescents (aged 12-15), 20 mid-adolescents (aged 15-18) and 17 adults (aged 25-35). All were male. The ability to maximize expected value improved with age. However, there was an inverted U-shaped developmental pattern for risk-seeking. The age at which risk-taking was highest was 14.38 years. Although emotion ratings overall did not differ across age, there was an increase between childhood and young adolescence in the strength of counterfactually mediated emotions (relief and regret) reported after receiving feedback about the gamble outcome. We suggest that continuing development of the emotional response to outcomes may be a factor contributing to adolescents' risky behaviour.

Fig. 1

The gambling task: partial feedback condition. On each trial, the participant is presented with two gambles (screen 1). The participant chooses one (screen 2). Once the participant has made a choice, the arrow spins round on the chosen gamble until it comes to rest on the obtained outcome (screen 3). Finally, the participant indicates his emotional response to the outcome on a continuous scale from −50 (I feel very negative) to +50 (I feel very positive). In the complete feedback condition, the arrows spin round on both wheels although the participant only receives the amount indicated on the chosen wheel.

Fig. 2

Mean winnings across the task show a positive correlation with age (β = 0.280, r² = 0.078, p = 0.009). Two outliers >3 s.d. away from the mean were excluded. Note that the two lower data points shown in this figure are not outliers by this definition; the linear relationship remains significant when these lower data points are excluded (see text for details).

Fig. 3

The proportion of risky choices differed across age groups (one-way ANOVA: F3,85 = 3.077, p = .032). The young adolescent group made a significantly greater proportion of risk-maximising choices than did the adult group (paired comparisons: p = .021 for YA vs. adult). The graph is fit with a quadratic function for purposes of illustration; a quadratic fit between age as a continuous variable and proportion of risky choices showed a point of inflection at age 14.38 years, and logit regression revealed an inverted U-shape relation between age and the influence of risk on choice (Table 1b).

Fig. 4

The strength of counterfactually mediated emotion ratings (relief and regret) is greater in the young adolescent than in the child group as shown by one-way ANOVA (F3,83 = 3.155, p = 0.029) with Bonferroni-corrected paired post hoc tests (child vs. young adolescent mean difference = 6.74, p = 0.037).