Adolescent (in)vulnerability

Abstract

Three groups of subjects were asked to judge the probability that they and several target others (a friend, an acquaintance, a parent, a child) would experience various risks. Subjects were middle-class adults, their teenage children, and high-risk adolescents from treatment homes. All three groups saw themselves as facing somewhat less risk than the target others. However, this perception of relative invulnerability was no more pronounced for adolescents than for adults. Indeed, the parents were viewed as less vulnerable than their teenage children by both the adults and those teens. These results are consistent with others showing small differences in the cognitive decision-making processes of adolescents and adults. Underestimating teens' competence can mean misdiagnosing the sources of their risk behaviors, denying them deserved freedoms, and failing to provide needed assistance.

PIP: Policy choices depend in part of political values and assumptions about adolescents' decision making abilities. The focus of this article is on judging the probability of adverse outcomes and the tendency to be overconfident. Discussion is directed to adolescent and adult invulnerability and evidence of other decision making skills. The conclusion from the review of evidence is that invulnerability is not particularly larger during adolescence. The hypothesis of this study directly tests adolescent invulnerability. A sample of 86 pairs of low-risk teens and parents and 95 high-risk teens were obtained from recruitment efforts at public high schools. The mean age of students was 15 years; the mean age of adults was 43 years. Low-risk persons were primarily girls and adults, more primarily mothers of teens. 23% of high risk teens were girls. Eight events were chosen to reflect high and low controlability (auto accident injury, alcohol dependency, unplanned pregnancy, mugging, sickness from air pollution or pesticides or radiation poisoning, and injury in a fire explosion). Evaluation for each event was made for controlability, probability of occurrence, preventive effort, and experience with the event. Subjects also evaluated 2-3 target individuals. The results pertain to the probability response mode as an ordinal scale; to control, prevention, and experience judgments; and to an examination of the absolute invulnerability hypothesis for group, target, and event factors. 43% of the time adolescents did not perceive any differences between their own level of risk and the target's. Otherwise, respondents were twice as likely to assign a higher risk probability to targets. 10% of the time, subjects assigned a risk of 0 or no chance. 33% of the time, the risk was less than 1 in 10,000. Risk was not any greater for teens than adults. Teens tended to overdifferentiate their situation, as indicated in the Elkind fable. Risk was gauged higher for the more active events. Teens were sensitive to how the question was posed; i.e. one time vs repeated actions. Low-risk teens and adults were moderately overconfident; high risk teens showed greater overconfidence. The theoretical and policy implications are dependent on the event; further research might focus on why adults view teens so harshly and deny them the right to govern their own actions.