Teenagers are not necessarily focused on what adults consider as being risky situations. The University College London reported, judgements of young adolescents about how risky a situation might be are most greatly influenced by what other teenagers think according to researchers. The researchers say most other age groups of people are more influenced by the views of adults.
In this study 563 visitors to the London Science Museum were asked to rate the riskiness that they perceived of in everyday situations such as crossing a road against a red light or deciding to take a shortcut through a dark alley. It was observed that all age groups were socially influenced and altered their risk ratings in the direction of other people’s risk ratings. However, this social influence effect lowered with age. Young adolescents were the only group that generally did not adjust their ratings more to conform to the ratings of adults.
Lead study author Dr Lisa Knoll of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said that young adolescents were more greatly influenced by other teenagers than by adults. This suggests that in early adolescence the opinions of other teens about risk are more significant than the opinions of adults. Dr Knoll also says these findings suggest that the target of public health interventions should be adolescent social norms instead of simply focusing on the potential health risks which are associated with various situations and choices.
This study has been published in the journal Psychological Science. Adolescence has been observed to be a period of life in which peer relationships become extremely important. There is a greater likelihood that adolescents will take risks when they are with peers rather than when they are alone. The opinions of other teenagers about risk seem to often influence young adolescents into judging a situation as less risky than they originally perceived of it as being. As people grow older they become more confident in their own judgement of risk and they are less influenced by other people.
