Citation

Knoll LJ, Leung JT, Foulkes L, Blakemore SJ. J. Adolesc. 2017; 60: 53-63.

Affiliation

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, WC1N 3AR, London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: s.blakemore@ucl.ac.uk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.adolescence.2017.07.002

PMID

28753485

Abstract

Adolescents are particularly susceptible to social influence. Here, we investigated the effect of social influence on risk perception in 590 participants aged eight to fifty-nine-years tested in the United Kingdom. Participants rated the riskiness of everyday situations, were then informed about the rating of these situations from a (fictitious) social-influence group consisting of teenagers or adults, and then re-evaluated the situation. Our first aim was to attempt to replicate our previous finding that young adolescents are influenced more by teenagers than by adults. Second, we investigated the social-influence effect when the social-influence group's rating was more, or less, risky than the participants' own risk rating. Younger participants were more strongly influenced by teenagers than by adults, but only when teenagers rated a situation as more risky than did participants. This suggests that stereotypical characteristics of the social-influence group - risk-prone teenagers - interact with social influence on risk perception.

Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Adolescence; Development; Risk perception; Social influence; Social norms; Stereotypes