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The Effect Of Peer Presence On Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors, Kelly E. Daniel

Honors College Theses

The emergence of risk-taking in adolescence, which can have life altering implications such as teenage pregnancy, car accidents, or drug overdoses, has been attributed to several different aspects of development including increased reward sensitivity and immature cognitive control contingent on motivation. Recent psychological research also indicates that adolescent risk-taking increases in the presence of peers. It remains unclear, however, whether this peer effect on risk-taking is attributable to amplified reward sensitivity or is a more general effect of experimenter expectancy and social desirability. This study builds upon this research using a computerized risk-taking task with stimuli that illustrate the probabilities …