Citation

Steinberg L. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2007; 16(2): 55–59.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

This article offers a perspective on adolescent risk-taking that is grounded in developmental neuroscience. According to developmental neuroscience, the time between puberty, which impels adolescents toward thrill seeking, and the slow maturation of the cognitive-control system, which regulates these impulses, makes adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability for risky behavior. This view of adolescent risk-taking helps to explain why educational interventions designed to change adolescents' knowledge, beliefs, or attitudes have been largely ineffective, and suggests that changing the contexts in which risky behavior occurs may be more successful than changing the way adolescents think about risk. The author concludes with a section on implications for preventive unhealthy risk-taking in adolescence, discussing driver education, sex education, and substance abuse education. Strategies such as more vigilantly enforcing laws, expanding adolescents' access to mental-health and contraceptive services, and raising the driving age are likely to be more effective than those approaches aimed at making adolescents wiser or less impulsive.

Language: en