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. 2022 Dec;32(4):1421-1432.
doi: 10.1111/jora.12705. Epub 2021 Dec 14.

Adolescents Are More Likely to Help Others on Days They Take Risks and Crave Social Connections

Emma Armstrong-Carter  1 , Emily S Bibby  2 , Melissa Burroughs  3 , Jessica E Flannery  3 , Benjamin W Nelson  3 , Natasha Duell  3 , Mitch J Prinstein  3 , Eva H Telzer  3
Affiliations

Adolescents Are More Likely to Help Others on Days They Take Risks and Crave Social Connections

Emma Armstrong-Carter et al. J Res Adolesc. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

This study examined how adolescents' risk-taking behaviors were related to their prosocial behaviors on a daily level and how this association differed depending on adolescents' daily and average levels of sensation seeking and social craving. Adolescents (N = 212; Mage = 15 years) completed daily diaries for 14 days. Adolescents were more likely to engage in prosocial behavior on days when they also took risks, but only when they also felt high levels of social craving. The daily link between risk-taking and prosocial behavior did not vary based on daily or individual differences in sensation seeking. Results suggest that when adolescents feel highly motivated to connect with others, their risk-taking and prosocial tendencies co-occur on a daily basis.

Keywords: daily diary; prosocial behavior; risk-taking.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare. Data and syntax are available upon request.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Interaction effect plotted at - + 1 SD. Risk-taking and prosocial behavior are positively linked only on days when adolescents feel high levels of social craving, and not on days when adolescents feel low levels of social craving. Note: Daily risk taking and prosocial behavior were originally dichotomized as 0 or 1 for the regression analyses. However, since they are within-person daily values which we then person-mean-centered, they range from near −1 to near +1 (across all participants) when centered.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Regions of significance: Risk-taking and prosocial behavior are positively linked only on days when adolescents feel high levels of social craving, and not on days when adolescents feel low levels of social craving.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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