But is helping you worth the risk? Defining Prosocial Risk Taking in adolescence

Abstract

Recent work has shown that the same neural circuitry that typically underlies risky behaviors also contributes to prosocial behaviors. Despite the striking overlap between two seemingly distinct behavioral patterns, little is known about how risk taking and prosociality interact and inform adolescent decision making. We review literature on adolescent brain development as it pertains to risk taking and prosociality and propose a new area of study, Prosocial Risk Taking, which suggests that adolescents can make risky decisions with the intention of helping other individuals. Given key socialization processes and ongoing neurodevelopmental changes during this time, adolescence may represent a sensitive period for the emergence of Prosocial Risk Taking, especially within a wide variety of social contexts when youth's increased sensitivity to social evaluation and belonging impacts their behaviors. Prosocial Risk Taking in adolescence is an area of study that has been overlooked in the literature, but could help explain how ontogenetic changes in the adolescent brain may create not only vulnerabilities, but also opportunities for healthy prosocial development.

Keywords: Adolescence; Prosocial; Prosocial risk taking; Risk taking; Social brain; Social sensitivity.

Fig. 1

A theoretical model characterizing the proposed intersection between prosociality and risk taking during adolescence. Each quadrant represents the four different groups that may emerge: (1) Antisocial Risk Takers may be likely to engage in high levels of risk taking but are low on prosocial inclinations, (2) Prosocial Risk Takers may be likely to engage in high levels of both risk taking and prosociality, (3) Indifferent Bystanders may show low levels of both risk-taking and prosocial proclivities, and (4) Empathetic Bystanders may be less likely to engage in risk taking but show high prosocial intentions. While individuals that fall within the center circle may be particularly sensitive to social and neural inputs for determining which group they most identify with, individuals located in the darker-colored areas of each quadrant might more strongly exhibit those behaviors.