Deviant peer or problematic culture?

It has long been recognized that much apparent peer influence is simply an artifact of peer selection effects; deviant teens often select similar teens as peers (Field & Prinstein, in press; Kandel, Reference Kandel1978). However, even in research that takes selection effects into account, there is a more fundamental, logical problem in looking to peer influences as a primary driver of adolescent pathology: Negative peer influence in most cases presumes already developed pathology elsewhere in a peer network, either with individual peers, or with regard to broader peer norms. Said differently, being influenced by a deviant peer requires the prior existence of that deviant peer. From this perspective, peer influence will almost never be a first cause of deviance in a population, and rarely even a primary cause. This does not mean that deviant peer influences don’t exist – they clearly do – but it should change our view of the pathological processes upon which we should be focusing.

A medical analogy can be instructive: Contagion is a widely recognized process in epidemiology, and the construct has been applied to a wide variety of social phenomena, including peer influence (Reiter et al., Reference Reiter, Suzuki, O’Doherty, Li and Eppinger2019). Deviant adolescent behavior can clearly be contagious. Yet, the medical arena recognizes a key distinction: The pathogen and the contagion process are logically distinct entities. The act of breathing, for example, is the primary route by which a person becomes infected with the Covid virus. We recognize, however, that it is the virus, not the act of breathing, that is the core pathology. The same logic applies to peer influence processes in adolescence: The core problem in understanding adolescent deviant behavior is likely not peer influence but a broader adolescent culture that has values that deviate in key respects from those of adult society. Adolescent deviance may be no more a primary function of peer influence, than the problem with Covid is a primary function of breathing. There may be instances where we should try to reduce negative peer influences, of course, just as there are instances where using a mask to restrict our breathing is sensible, but this will be a tertiary approach at best.

We first confronted this issue in our own research when we were examining teens who were desired as companions by their peers at age 13 (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Porter and McFarland2006). These teens were well-adjusted in numerous respects: they got along well with their parents, they had strong close friendships, and they were psychosocially mature. When we followed them a year later, however, we found that compared to their less well-liked peers, they were also far more likely to begin using alcohol and marijuana, and far more likely to engage in at least minor forms of delinquency, such as shoplifting. Why was this? It was our team of late adolescent undergraduate research assistants who provided the ready answer: This occurred because these behaviors are admired and valued (i.e., considered cool) within adolescent culture. And not just within deviant adolescent culture, but within adolescent culture broadly defined.

Our well-liked teens were well-socialized by all accounts, the problem was that they were being socialized within an adolescent culture with norms that deviated in significant ways from those of adult society. When we see peers encouraging one another to engage in behaviors, such as drinking and minor forms of delinquency, we view these as antisocial and deviant from an adult-centric perspective, without always considering that they are often considered socially normative within adolescent culture. This culture clash, and not peer influence processes, seems like the true pathogenic process.

The reason for the disconnect between adolescent and adult norms is unclear, although a strong possibility is that over the past century adolescence has come to be structured such that teens in Western society are increasingly disconnected from meaningful interaction with the adult world. We’ve written extensively about this elsewhere (Allen & Allen, Reference Allen and Allen2009), but here would simply note that as the length of time between puberty and full adult status has lengthened, we’ve increasingly asked young people at the height of their physical powers, the height of their energy levels, and even at the peak of their of information processing capacity, to do little other than sit at desks, take notes, and answer questions on multiple choice tests, preparing for an adult future that is often many years away. Further, the work required is often done in isolation, and the likelihood of the content learned actually being useful to the vast majority of adolescents in adulthood is often marginal (e.g., mastering operations with imaginary numbers). As a consequence, adolescents are given relatively little direct access to adult roles and responsibilities. Though adolescents naturally desire adult status, they find it largely out of reach in important ways, and this problem appears to be worsening. Even simple adult-like behaviors, such as driving or going out without parents are occurring less frequently for our youth (Twenge & Park, Reference Twenge and Park2019).

The deviant behavior we see in adolescence may well be better explained by this disconnect from the adult world than by an appeal to peer influence. Moffitt (Reference Moffitt1993) has suggested that we can explain a number of criminal behaviors in adolescence, such as shoplifting, as efforts for adolescents to attain the appearance of economic ‘maturity’ when other avenues to attaining such maturity are cut off. Supporting this notion, as teenagers enter their twenties, and take on real adult roles, rates of deviant behavior fall by more than half, even though twenty-somethings would arguably be more physically and cognitively able to pull off criminal behavior without getting caught (Moffitt, Reference Moffitt1993). Further evidence in support of this proposition comes from anthropologists’ observations of primitive tribes, which found a strong correlation between greater integration of adolescents into adult life in a tribe and lower levels of delinquency (Schlegel & Barry, Reference Schlegel and Barry1991). In tribes that integrate adolescents into the adult world, deviant adolescent values were no longer a significant issue. These findings all suggest that without an adolescent culture supporting deviant behavior, peer influence would be less of a concern, just as without Covid, mask-free breathing is not only fine, its essential.

Peer influence as a positive socializing force

Failure to distinguish the pathogen from contagion processes has led to much research that begins with the presumption that most peer influences regarding deviant behaviors are maladaptive in nature. A logical fallacy in this assumption is that peer influence is often symmetric in nature: Finding strong peer influence with regard to substance use, for example, may mean not just that some teens are influenced to higher use by their high using friends but also that others are influenced to relatively lower use by abstaining friends. It is logically impossible for beta weights from lagged regression analyses to distinguish between these possibilities and indeed both may well co-exist, as there is little a priori reason to expect influences always to be skewed in one direction.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that peer influence can at times be unambiguously positive (Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2020; Field & Prinstein, in press; Laursen & Veenstra, Reference Laursen and Veenstra2021). Peer influences, for example, can be useful in getting others to attend to environmental issues (Frank, Reference Frank2021). Indeed the argument has been made that peer influences can be quite useful with regard to any issue where individuals would not otherwise directly feel the consequences of their actions – e.g., in socially sanctioning behaviors such as littering (Mani et al., Reference Mani, Rahwan and Pentland2013). Specific efforts to use peer norms to do things like reduce prejudice (Paluck, Reference Paluck2011) have led to the idea that socialization by our peers that may be one of our most effective means of improving our world (Rosenberg, Reference Rosenberg2011). Little wonder then, that human adolescents would be wired to attend to such socializing influences.

Our own longitudinal research largely confirms this perspective. In the same study that found that well-liked adolescents engaged in more substance use we also found that they were increasingly less likely to engage in aggressive behavior over time (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Porter and McFarland2006) – evidence of likely positive influence effects for these socially attuned young people. Similarly, we’ve found that young people who were most likely to become more similar to their friends over time (i.e., appear influenced) were characterized by good relationships with their mothers and greater likability with peers (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Loeb, Kansky and Davis2020). This was true, even though the influence being observed was with regard to subtance abuse. Notably, however, the influence was symmetric in nature: Teens were as likely to be influenced to less substance use by abstaining peers as the reverse. These readily influenced young people simply appeared to be well-socialized, as has also been found in other studies of readily influenced teens (Reiter et al., Reference Reiter, Suzuki, O’Doherty, Li and Eppinger2019).

Beyond just measures of influence, we also find that “pack behaviors” in adolescence, including traits such as being viewed by peers as more of a follower than a leader and being seen by peers as less assertive are predictive of greater physical health into young adulthood (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Uchino and Hafen2015). Although fierce independence is highly valued in Western society, cross-cultural scholars note that the socializing value of a more harmony-focused approach to group interactions is quite widely recognized in Eastern cultures (Talhelm et al., Reference Talhelm, Zhang, Oishi, Shimin, Duan, Lan and Kitayama2014).

In sum, becoming well-socialized, almost by definition, requires being receptive to influence by others in the social world. This can at times lead to problematic behaviors – not because being influenced is bad, but because of the culture doing the influencing. The Covid/ breathing metaphor above is thus likely even more apt than it might first appear. At a stage in life where learning to connect deeply with others is critical, learning from and being influenced by one’s peers may well be as vital to social development as breathing is to physical survival.

Peer pressure is not the same as peer influence

One of the reasons that peer influence has likely garnered a bad reputation, aside from its links to concerning adolescent behaviors, is that it has often been conflated with peer pressure. Yet, despite the popular depictions of peer pressure in teen movies (see e.g., Heathers, Mean Girls), our best evidence suggests that most peer influence does not result from actual peer pressure (Field & Prinstein, in press). Rather, youths adopt the behavior of their peers not as a result of pressure, but rather to enhance their social status and personal power (Ungar, Reference Ungar2000).

Peer pressure is nevertheless a real phenomenon and under some circumstances can lead to negative outcomes. Among groups of deviant peers, coercive, deviancy-training behaviors (in which deviant talk and behavior are reinforced coercively) is associated with increases in deviance over time (Dishion et al., Reference Dishion, Andrews and Crosby1995; Dishion & Owen, Reference Dishion and Owen2002). Similarly, exposure to aggression by peers is also often linked to relative increases in deviant behavior, (Vitaro et al., Reference Vitaro, Brendgen and Tremblay2000). Clearly, adolescents can become less functional in the face of coercive behavior from peers, but this is essentially the same finding as has been observed when adolescents display long-term negative effects following coercive behavior by parents (Loeb et al., Reference Loeb, Kansky, Tan, Costello and Allen2021). Coercive environments can breed psychopathology, whether created by parents or by peers, but peer coercion is not the same as peer influence and most peer influence does not involve coercion. Indeed, in normative samples, higher levels of peer influence are actually predicted by lower levels of peer pressuring behavior (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Loeb, Kansky and Davis2020).

Implications for peer relationship research

There are several implications for future research based on an increased awareness of the importance of peer relationships and peer influences. First, as we think about factors affecting peer relationships, our focus should be on how they do or do not affect the potential to establish deep relationships. For example, social media use is currently an area of tremendous concern, with some having suggested it as key to understanding increasing rates of adolescent depression (Twenge et al., Reference Twenge, Haidt, Joiner and Campbell2020). Yet research linking social media use to psychopathology has typically yielded only quite modest effects (Cunningham et al., Reference Cunningham, Hudson and Harkness2021; Keles et al., Reference Keles, McCrae and Grealish2020). The analysis in this paper suggests that focus of this research may simply be slightly misplaced: Perhaps it isn’t time spent on social media, but rather the time not spent engaged in in-person interactions that matters. Given that much of “social” media currently involves only minimal or shallow social interaction (e.g., “likes” on an app), and given its highly seductive nature, its most potent feature may simply be its potential to displace time spent in far more important and valuable types of social interaction. This would suggest, for example, different outcomes for social media users who did vs. did not also have significant and meaningful in-person interactions with close peers. Similarly, research that distinguishes among the different qualities and facets of adolescent media use is likely to be far more useful than research simply tallying quantity of use.

A second implication of the analysis above is that all research on peer influence should explicitly consider the potentially symmetrical nature of such influence. It is logically incorrect to move from finding that a factor predicts peer influence on a maladaptive behavior to concluding that that factor is therefore an explanation for higher rates of that behavior. There may be cases where such asymmetry exists, but this must be confirmed by empirical observation, not left as an unquestioned assumption. Indeed, identifying areas where influence is asymmetrical could be a major area of advance: Perhaps peer influence about issues such as participation in extracurriculars, or even excelling in school (among some groups) is primarily in a positive direction. This might identify specific domains where peer influence could be encouraged vs. discouraged. Also, it may be that later in adolescence, as peer cultural norms change, peer influences may largely shift in a positive direction (e.g., it may become uncool to get wasted at a party and performing volunteer service in a community may garner many “likes” on social media). We’ve spent many years mapping the “prison” of adolescent deviancy-training and coercive behavior among peers; maybe it is time to also begin mapping the escape routes (Waters & Lawrence, Reference Waters and Lawrence1993). Expanding existing research on peer influences toward adaptive behaviors (Leung et al., Reference Foulkes, Leung, Fuhrmann, Knoll and Blakemore2018) would help address this gap.

As we move beyond seeing all peer influence as negative and we recognize the distinction between peer influence and peer pressure, this may also allow more careful and nuanced consideration of just what peer pressure implies for adolescent development. If pressure is not the primary mechanism of influence, then just what role does it serve, and what does it mean for an adolescent to feel pressured, particularly given that the experience of peer pressure has long been identified as one of the single greatest stressors adolescents report facing on a regular basis (Brown, Reference Brown1982; Gao et al., Reference Gao, Liu, Yang and Wang2021)?

Finally, recognizing the potentially benign or even positive overall role of peer influence suggests the need to more carefully examine other factors driving adolescent deviance. To the extent that many of the pathological processes leading to adolescent deviance may be seen more productively at the cultural level, as opposed to the individual level, this suggests focusing on just what it is about the larger adult culture and adolescent roles within it that drives these pathological processes.

We are persuaded by the argument that as teens have become cut off from meaningful contact with adult roles, we have created conditions where a subculture with values that have drifted away from those of the larger society can grow, like weeds on an unused plot of land. Notably, adolescents who are given the opportunity to meaningfully engage in volunteer community service (i.e., to take on adult-like roles) have shown nearly 50% decreases in rates of pregnancy and school failure in randomized trials (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Philliber, Herrling and Kuperminc1997). More generally, late adolescents given opportunities to take on generic adult-like help giving roles display gains across domains ranging from subjective vitality to global self-esteem (Weinstein & Ryan, Reference Weinstein and Ryan2010). Further research examining ways that engaging adolescents in adult roles may alter deviant norms is clearly warranted.

Implications for intervention

Although continued research into the sources and sequelae of stronger peer connections in adolescence is warranted, we are now at a point where a focus on intervention efforts is also likely to be productive. Such interventions need not be expensive or unwieldy. One of the most promising examples to date is Walton and Cohen’s (Reference Walton and Cohen2011) project on social belonging. In this, project, entering college students were exposed to a one-hour intervention that focused on making clear that social belonging did not always come easily to college students, but that with time and a bit of effort and persistence things were likely to work out socially. In essence, the intervention implicitly encouraged students who may have been feeling left out to keep trying to fit in and not give up. Notably, this one-hour intervention produced effects three years later, in terms of both physical health and likelihood of college graduation for college first-years who were members of racial/ethnic minority groups.

A similar effect has been observed with a somewhat more intensive intervention designed to directly build stronger bonds among youth. The Connection Project is a semester-long intervention, with versions at both the high school and college level, in which students meet for about an hour each week in small groups led by trained facilitators (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Narr, Nagel, Costello and Guskin2021; Costello, Nagel, Hunt, Rivens, et al., Reference Costello, Nagel, Hunt, Rivens, Hazelwood, Pettit and Allen2022). The intervention seeks to recreate the conditions under which strong peer bonding sometimes happens naturally – but do so in a more replicable fashion. The program focuses on first building a sense of safety and security within a group. Then, through a graduated series of voluntary activities, it gives youths a chance to see just how much they share in common beneath the surface (but may be hesitant to show others). Ultimately, youths learn how to share their unique story with others and learn the value of doing so as they form strong bonds with former strangers. Results from multiple randomized trials suggest that the program not only helps youth rapidly build strong bonds, but also reduces their levels of loneliness and depressive symptoms (Costello et al., Reference Costello, Nagel, Hunt and Allen2022; Costello, Nagel, Hunt, Rivens, et al., Reference Costello, Nagel, Hunt, Rivens, Hazelwood, Pettit and Allen2022). For high school students in under-resourced schools, the program also increased academic engagement (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Narr, Nagel, Costello and Guskin2021). The program has grown rapidly from the pilot stage to now serving a quarter of the incoming students at a major public university and is undergoing replication at both the high school and college levels.

As with the social belonging intervention, effects of The Connection Project are strongest for students who might otherwise be marginalized, whether via membership in an ethnic minority group or by virtue of coming from a family with lower levels of parental education or income. Among all of the other obstacles marginalized youth often face, the feelings of estrangement from the larger peer culture are less visible but no less prevalent. Yet as growing findings on the importance of social connection suggest, these experiences of estrangement may also be among the most devastating. Establishing strong peer connections among potentially marginalized youth is something that can happen within communities of these youth – it is empowerment in the truest sense of the term. It can also occur in heterogeneous groups, for example, in predominantly white institutions, in which case it provides a means by which potentially marginalized students can come to feel more integrated into the larger social world of the institution (Costello, Nagel, Hunt, Rivens, et al., Reference Costello, Nagel, Hunt, Rivens, Hazelwood, Pettit and Allen2022). Continued efforts to develop these and similar interventions are clearly warranted.

The rewards of risk

We begin with a premise recognized in principle by many risk researchers, but given far less attention in practice: Risk taking in adolescence is not inherently problematic. Indeed, in some cases it can be argued that a heightened risk preference in adolescence (relative to adulthood) may even be quite adaptive. This need to consider context in assessing the adaptive or maladaptive nature of a behavior is a key principle of developmental psychopathology (Cicchetti, Reference Cicchetti2016) that is particularly applicable in this case. Consider the following thought experiment: Imagine a typical 50-year-old offered a chance to greatly expand their intellectual and career horizons. The one catch is that this would require moving to a new city for several years, a city they had only briefly visited and where they knew no one. It would require living in a communal situation with complete strangers, with accommodations that were a significant step down from their current housing. And to truly gain the benefits of this opportunity, our 50-year-old would need to substantially increase their effort level, taking on harder and more challenging work than they’d ever experienced previously. In essence, they would be risking giving up the comforts of most all that they had known to that point for the promise of something better in the future. A pretty big risk.

This of course is precisely what a move to a residential college entails for many adolescents. What is striking is that while no doubt some adults would, with trepidation, accept the offer described above, the vast majority of adolescents who are given the opportunity eagerly jump into the college process. The level of tolerance of uncertainty required to go from one’s high school friends and community and room at home to a new city, new roommate and demanding new challenges is tremendous. The risks – academic failure, isolation and loneliness, social rejection – are huge.

Interestingly, much of adolescents’ apparent heightened risk preference relative to adults has been traced to exactly the type of tolerance for ambiguous situations that actions like college transitions require (Blankenstein et al., Reference Blankenstein, Huettel and Li2021; Tymula et al., Reference Tymula, Rosenberg Belmaker, Roy, Ruderman, Manson, Glimcher and Levy2012). Openness to this sort of risk can be highly functional as it is closely linked to openness to the possibility of substantial rewards (Ellis et al., Reference Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg and Van IJzendoorn2011). The teen willing to try out for a sports team, for example, knowing that they have a decent chance of getting embarrassed by poor performance is an adaptive risk taker (Fischer & Smith, Reference Fischer and Smith2004). If adolescents had the level of caution and risk aversion of most adults, many would likely forego some of the most promising opportunities available to them. Being willing to tolerate the possibility of failure appears critical to adolescents’ willingness to take on critical developmental challenges they face (Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2021; Meyer & Turner, Reference Meyer and Turner2006).

Although this college hypothetical applies primarily to the relatively privileged, adolescents from all strata face enormous uncertainty as they move out on their own. Taking on a first job, establishing intimate relationships, leaving home – these are all situations where the potential rewards are significant, but only if one is willing to run the risk of the punishing experiences that come with potential failures and setbacks. Indeed, much social interaction is likely to appear quite risky for teens who are just finding their way socially and who lack well-developed social skills. From this perspective, an orientation of the adolescent brain toward rewards and opportunities and away from a focus on negative outcomes no longer seems so dysfunctional.

We can also view adolescent risk preference in situations like these as an example of an “explore-exploit” tradeoff (Mehlhorn et al., Reference Mehlhorn, Newell, Todd, Lee, Morgan, Braithwaite, Hausmann, Fiedler and Gonzalez2015). This tradeoff involves deciding when it is better to take advantage of known payoffs (i.e., exploit existing knowledge) vs. exploring potentially more lucrative but less certain options that may pay off over time. From an adolescent perspective, taking risks that can potentially open up new opportunities (from better careers to improved social status) can make a great deal of sense, particularly given the long time frame across which knowledge gained from taking such risks can pay off.

Looking more broadly, it is not hard to imagine that adolescent risk-taking may have even had significant survival value across evolutionary time (Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2021). Whether it be long hunting forays, physical combat, or the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, adolescents needed to take significant risks simply to survive and to ensure the survival of their clan (Ellis et al., Reference Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg and Van IJzendoorn2011). The idea that evolution left the human species with a multi-year period where an imbalance in brain development created heightened risk preference with little compensating reward seems unlikely from this perspective (Crone & Dahl, Reference Crone and Dahl2012; Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2021).

Learning how to thoughtfully take risks requires experience taking risks

Adolescence may also require some degree of risk taking simply to learn to develop competence in judging when risks do and do not make sense. Even risks that lead to substantial losses may provide information that is quite useful going forward. The adolescent who decides to ditch studying for an important test and then fails, or who decides to argue with a boss and then gets fired experiences highly informative (albeit painful) consequences. These consequences are likely far less detrimental, however, than the consequences of similar behaviors enacted later in life. Adolescence appears to be an optimal time to take these kinds of risks and learn from them (e.g., perhaps by finding a better way to motivate oneself to study or to more skillfully address conflict in future workplaces).

Yet, a legitimate question remains: Don’t adolescents engage in dangerous, even deadly behaviors because of their risk-taking propensities? Clearly adolescents do engage in such behaviors (Duell et al., Reference Duell, Steinberg, Icenogle, Chein, Chaudhary, Di Giunta, Dodge, Fanti, Lansford, Oburu, Pastorelli, Skinner, Sorbring, Tapanya, Uribe Tirado, Alampay, Al-Hassan, Takash, Bacchini and Chang2018), yet it is not always clear if this reflects a greater risk-taking propensity. A corollary to the idea of adolescents needing to gain risk-taking competence is that adolescents may make poor decisions regarding risks at times not because they are excessive risk takers, but simply due to ignorance and lack of risk-taking skill. Adolescence opens up immense new venues of potential risk and reward, from driving an automobile to engaging in romantic behavior (Mehlhorn et al., Reference Mehlhorn, Newell, Todd, Lee, Morgan, Braithwaite, Hausmann, Fiedler and Gonzalez2015). Adolescents may, due to inexperience, simply be poor at perceiving the risks in certain situations.

Not being fully cognizant of some risks after just learning to drive, for example, such as the existence of “black ice” on otherwise snowless roads, may lead to driving too fast for given conditions and possibly to an accident. Adolescent drivers do have high accident rates, but these decline dramatically after the first year of driving – a decline that is unlikely to be attributable to brain development over such a short span. Declining accident rates are no doubt partly due to skill improvements, but also to adolescents learning just what is and is not a substantial risk. For example, driving four miles per hour over the speed limit, though illegal, may be minimally risky on dry pavement with no traffic on a clear day, whereas driving even at or just below the speed limit on a snowy road at night may be quite risky. Having an accident because of failure to recognize this sort of distinction is unfortunate, but has little to do with risk-taking propensity.

Inaccurate perception of risk is thus likely to be quite important in understanding dangerous behaviors in adolescence, but it is conceptually distinct from a heightened risk preference (Edelson & Reyna, Reference Edelson and Reyna2021). Adolescents may engage in quite dangerous behaviors, not out of a willingness to take risks, but rather out of simple ignorance. Notably, adult history is littered with examples of behaviors that look quite risky only in retrospect, ranging from Marie Curie’s early (and deadly) research on radioactivity to the hundreds of mishaps of adults’ first attempts to deep-fry a Thanksgiving turkey. All of these are situations where the dangerous behavior primarily reflects lack of comprehension of the risks faced.

In sum, adaptive risk taking is a skill (Blair et al., Reference Blair, Moyett, Bato, DeRosse and Karlsgodt2018) and there are likely few eras better than adolescence to learn it. A significant degree of risk taking may thus be viewed as critical to learning and growing. Although our field at times does note that risk taking can be adaptive (Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2021), we have made virtually no effort to study it from this vantage point. This oversight becomes particularly problematic as we look at the problems associated with the opposite of risk-taking preference: risk aversion, to which we now turn.

The problem of risk aversion

In modern society, evidence suggests that if anything our brain wiring is such that adult humans tend to be overly loss averse. In a wide variety of risk-reward studies, evidence suggests that adults value avoiding a loss to a greater extent than gaining an equivalent level of reward, even when logically this makes little sense. Identified as prospect theory, the finding is that losses matter more than equivalent gains when adults are making many types of decisions (Kahneman & Tversky, Reference Kahneman and Tversky2013). As adolescents move into adulthood, this bias if anything may grow stronger (Reyna & Farley, Reference Reyna and Farley2006).

Given the classic behavioral economics paradigm, for example, of being offered a 50% chance to win $100, but with a 50% chance to lose $80, a rational, expected-value analysis would suggest taking the bet. Most adults would not, however, and this risk averse bias can be observed even at the neural level (Barkley-Levenson et al., Reference Barkley-Levenson, Van Leijenhorst and Galván2013). Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, adolescents do not differ from adults in this task. Both groups are overly loss sensitive. It has been suggested that it may be only in more arousing situations (e.g., around peers) that adolescent risk taking propensities increase (Figner et al., Reference Figner, Mackinlay, Wilkening and Weber2009; Gardner & Steinberg, Reference Gardner and Steinberg2005). Moving into these “hot” situations doesn’t necessarily turn adolescents into excessive risk takers; it may simply move them from being overly loss sensitive farther along a continuum toward a more neutral stance.

All of the examples above, both hypothetical and real, should also make clear that although adolescent risk taking is often equated with antisocial behavior, the two phenomena are quite distinct. Conversely, avoiding risks can often be problematic: The teen who starts smoking for fear that not to do so will seem uncool and risk rejection, or who rejects going to sleep-away camp because it seems too unfamiliar, or who never raises a hand in class for fear of looking dumb, is a maladaptive risk avoider. This risk avoider may even engage in highly antisocial behaviors, for example damaging a disliked peer’s possessions, though only when they are certain not to be caught. The implication of these examples is that we need to recognize dangerous and antisocial behaviors as such, and not just assume they are a manifestation of excessive risk preference. Similarly, we need to recognize that the positive risk taking we admire in both adolescence and adulthood may not be readily separable from a more general propensity toward risk-taking behavior that may at times also lead to problematic risks (Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2020, Reference Duell and Steinberg2021).

The example of the antisocial low risk teen also suggests another point: The true opposite of risk is not necessarily safety, it may be anxiety and avoidance. Notably, risk aversion has been identified as a central element of anxious and depressive symptoms (Chandrasekhar Pammi et al., Reference Chandrasekhar Pammi, Pillai Geethabhavan Rajesh, Kesavadas, Rappai Mary, Seema, Radhakrishnan and Sitaram2015; Maner & Schmidt, Reference Maner and Schmidt2006). Given soaring levels of anxiety and depression among adolescents, it seems quite plausible that adolescents’ increased risk aversion may be an important causal factor.

Over the past 25 years, adolescents in the United States have decreased their likelihood of engaging in multiple forms of risky behavior: They have fewer auto accidents, are less likely to get pregnant, less likely to use hard drugs, and less likely to engage in violent behavior. But, as already noted, they are also less likely to be driving, working for pay, or going out without parents (Twenge & Park, Reference Twenge and Park2019). If these behavioral changes are indeed linked to adolescents as a group becoming more risk averse and thus more anxious, and depressed, this would suggest the need for a shift in our approach to understanding risk taking during this period. Interestingly, risk aversion has been linked to precisely the same brain areas (the ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex) as risk preference, though of course in opposite directions (Tom et al., Reference Tom, Fox, Trepel and Poldrack2007). This suggests the adolescent brain may not be badly imbalanced toward risk (an evolutionarily implausible outcome) but may rather be somewhat precariously balanced between risk and avoidance.

The changing manifestations of adolescent psychopathology over the past 25 years may reflect a shift in this precarious balance. Although cell phones and social media provide easy targets for those seeking to explain increases in adolescent depression, a broader shift toward risk aversion may more parsimoniously explain both increases in internalizing symptoms and decreases in externalizing symptoms over this period. A range of broad societal changes across this period could well account for this shift: Recent generations of adolescents have grown up in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, the worst financial crisis in almost a century, numerous breathlessly reported school shootings, and the recognition that climate change may make future life increasingly challenging. As the idea fades that each generation can simply expect to do better than the one that came before and the world looks increasingly dangerous and inhospitable, the need for caution so as not to fall off a narrow and precarious path to adulthood may take hold. Increasing risk aversion may thus be a natural and expectable response for many adolescents. It may even be a response which has some benefits in reducing dangerous adolescent behavior. Yet when carried to extremes it can also clearly become a source of significant internalizing psychopathology.

Do adolescents even take more risks?

Although the concept of adolescents as overly risk averse may seem counterintuitive given the stereotype of the risk-taking teen, there is actually good reason to question just how accurate this stereotype of the risk-taking teen has really ever been. There is, of course, no question that adolescents engage in certain types of self-destructive behavior more often than adults, though, as noted above, this is only weak evidence regarding their risk-taking propensities. Research has been surprisingly inconclusive about the extent to which adolescents actually do seek out more risk overall than adults across a variety of situations (Defoe et al., Reference Defoe, Dubas, Figner and van Aken2015). For example, the presumed risk-taking bias of adolescents in the larger world tends to be not so easy to replicate under a broad range of more controlled conditions (Crone & van Duijvenvoorde, Reference Crone and van Duijvenvoorde2021). If adolescents are not actually more risk seeking than adults, and if their risk aversion underlies some of their internalizing symptomatology, than seeking to increase that risk aversion may be exactly the wrong prescription for their well-being.

The idea that adolescents engage in more risk-taking behavior may partly reflect lack of recognition of the unique, adolescent-related risk-benefit tradeoffs that teens must typically make. Undoubtedly, much of the concern about adolescent risk-taking stems from observation of the sometimes devastating consequences of adolescent decisions that appear risky or irrational from an adult perspective. In thinking about whether these behaviors reflect a greater preference for risk, the key question is one of context: Are we fully recognizing the real risk and reward matrix that adolescents actually face? Without fully appreciating context, real-world risk is impossible to evaluate: Soldiers in a war zone likely engage in more risky behavior than office workers. This is not, however, because they prefer more risk but because the context forces them to make tradeoffs among highly risky options (e.g., attack vs. stay put).

One reason adolescent behavior may appear overly risky is that the costs and benefits of the various options open to the adolescent are often viewed only from an adult-centric vantage point. Peer relationships provide the clearest example of the type of unique cost benefit tradeoff teens must make. We know that in many situations the presence of peers increases an adolescent’s likelihood of taking risks (Crone & van Duijvenvoorde, Reference Crone and van Duijvenvoorde2021). To date, this has largely been understood in terms of the presence of peers acting as an amplifier of an irrational adolescent preference for risk. The alternative perspective – that the presence of peers adds new risks and rewards, linked to peer approval and rejection, and that this does not imply dysfunction – has received far less attention. From an adolescent perspective, the teen considering using a drug or driving aggressively so as to maintain peer approval may not be making the decision that risk taking is worthwhile; rather that teen may be choosing which of two types of risks – peer rejection vs. auto accident – is most important to minimize in a given situation.

This might still seem like it should be a clear choice from an adult perspective. Yet, once we recognize that going against the norms of popular and influential peers has significant potential to undermine a teen’s school-wide reputation (Dijkstra & Gest, Reference Dijkstra and Gest2015; Field et al., Reference Field, Choukas-Bradley, Giletta, Telzer, Cohen and Prinstein2024) and that this is balanced against the low probability of an accident in any given instance, the equation becomes more complicated. As noted above, social rejection, exclusion, and loneliness create tremendous risks for adolescents, both physical and mental. Although an established adult with longstanding relationships may see the effects of potential embarrassment in front of peers as relatively minor, for an adolescent just beginning to establish intense relationships outside of the family, the possibility of losing face in front of a substantial portion of one’s peers is potentially devastating. Social rejection by peers and/or romantic partners is one of the leading potential causes of adolescent suicide (Cheek et al., Reference Cheek, Goldston, Erkanli, Massing-Schaffer and Liu2020; Oppenheimer et al., Reference Oppenheimer, Silk, Lee, Dahl, Forbes, Ryan and Ladouceur2020; Yadegarfard et al., Reference Yadegarfard, Meinhold-Bergmann and Ho2014), and a clear driver of adolescent anxiety and depression. In recent years, adolescent suicide rates have risen such that they are now on a par with adolescent deaths due to auto accidents (National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control, 2022). Given this, where the greatest risks lie in the above scenario becomes less clear and unless we account for this sort of tradeoff, our analysis of the adolescent decision-making process will be invariably flawed.

Decisions about risk also do not just involve trading off between risks, they involve considering t he accompanying benefits that may follow risky decisions. In some cases, taking great risks can be highly rational: The investor pursuing a risky stock may take on the chance of losing their entire investment for the chance of quadrupling that investment. Such risky behavior undergirds much of American entrepreneurship and is highly valued in this context. The behavior involves risk but is also often highly functional. To the extent adolescents expect a net positive outcome from a risky behavior, pursuing that behavior is no longer a pure measure of risk-taking propensity (Edelson & Reyna, Reference Edelson and Reyna2021). In adolescence and adulthood, for example, building esteem among one’s peers as someone brave and bold has clear short- and long-term value, both mentally and physically. The high levels of activation of the limbic system in adolescence, which have been linked to greater risk taking, may well largely reflect sensitivity to precisely this kind of positive social feedback from peers (Crone & Dahl, Reference Crone and Dahl2012; Somerville, Reference Somerville2013). The point here is simply that the value of succeeding with peers in adolescence creates substantial expected value which can rationally justify significant risk to achieve it, even among adolescents who have only modest levels of risk preference.

Implications for risk research

There are several implications of this analysis for future research on adolescent risk taking. First, we should stop assuming that the dangerous and destructive behaviors in which adolescents engage automatically reflect a heightened propensity to take risks. In some cases (e.g., ingesting a substance when told by a peer that everyone uses it and its fine), such behavior may primarily reflect ignorance of the actual risks involved and a desire for peer approval. The behavior is clearly problematic, but it may not reflect propensity toward risk taking. Until we stop reflexively conflating antisocial and/or dangerous behaviors with risk taking, it will be impossible to consider the ways in which high levels of risk taking can be good and low levels potentially problematic.

Recognizing that certain antisocial behaviors may not primarily reflect risk-taking propensities then also opens up avenues to study other drivers of these behaviors, such as alienation or impaired moral development (Malti et al., Reference Malti, Galarneau and Peplak2021). Relatedly, expanding our efforts to understand positive risk taking may help both in identifying new avenues to promoting adolescent development as well as understanding the pathologies of anxious or depressed youth who maladaptively avoid taking even moderate positive risks, such as joining a club or trying a new sport (Duell & Steinberg, Reference Duell and Steinberg2021)

This paper also suggests that a largely overlooked factor in the adolescent risk calculus is the importance of establishing and maintaining status with one’s peers. Simply considering the very real risks that peer interactions pose to the teen, both short- and long-term, will helpfully inform our understanding of the risk-benefit equation most teens must solve. Doing the careful work to understand and measure how adolescents perceive actual peer risks in various situations would be a good first step in this direction. In addition, if adolescents are rationally choosing to take physical risks because of the threat of losing peer approval, recognizing these peer risks as legitimate suggests a promising avenue for developing preventive interventions. We already know that simply educating adolescents about the risks of certain behaviors is often ineffective (e.g., teens already overestimate the risks of certain outcomes, such as acquiring HIV (Reyna & Farley, Reference Reyna and Farley2006)). If teens are trading off peer risks vs. physical-safety risks, then one way to alter this calculus is to invest effort helping teens solidify key peer relationships such that they seem less tenuous.

Finally, we need to recognize that being a risk taker as a teen is not the same as being an excessive risk taker. Comfort with some degree of risk appears essential to surviving and thriving in adolescence. One way of understanding both the dramatic decreases in behaviors such as delinquent activity, drug use and unprotected sex, and the simultaneous increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms among youth over the past 25 years is to posit that as a cohort, adolescents have become far more risk averse.

This would imply that we consider studying risk aversion in adolescence with the same tenacity that we’ve studied risk preference thus far. We might ask whether failure to be open to moderate risks of discomfort (e.g., avoiding in-person get togethers with peers in favor of the safety of more circumscribed online interactions) is linked to the increase in internalizing behavior seen over the past several decades. Although it remains possible that a high degree of risk preference is in fact detrimental, this is an empirical question that cannot be answered if our measures of risk preference in real-world situations are always confounded with measures of antisocial behavior. We are making a fundamental error when we only measure risk in relation to dangerous behaviors and thus treat the risk averse teen as “healthy” without also considering the role of risk aversion and internalizing symptoms in our research.