Teenager risk-taking

Via NYT article, Valerie Reyna at Cornell's Laboratory For Rational Decision Making and colleagues Charles Brainerd, and Frank Farley at Temple University look at risky behavior by teenagers.

Reyna & Farley write, “It now becomes clearer why traditional intervention programs fail to help many teenagers. Although the programs stress the importance of accurate risk perception, young people already feel vulnerable and overestimate their risks.” So, it seems like teenagers in general don't need reminders that particular behaviors (unprotected sex, driving drunk) are risky.

I've been interested in the possibilities of experimental decision making to both teach good decision making, and to diagnose kids who are likely to make bad decisions. My interest is less about teenagers in general, but kids who are likely to make the kinds of big mistakes which they'll regret later, or consistently make smaller but significant mistakes.

Book to look at: The development of judgment and decision making in children and adolescents, J. Jacobs & P. Klaczynski (Eds.).

Articles:

• Rivers, S. E., Reyna, V. F., & Mills, B. A. (in press). Risk taking under the influence: A fuzzy-trace theory of emotion in adolescence. Developmental Review.
• Reyna, V.F., & Farley, F. (2006). Risk and Rationality in Adolescent Decision Making: Implications for Theory, Practice, and Public Policy. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1-44.
• Reyna V.F., Ellis S.C. Fuzzy-Trace Theory and Framing Effects in Children's Risky Decision Making. Psychol Sci. 1994;5:275-279.

Slightly related is a current discussion on the ESA-discuss list about using experiments to teach things (ethics? cooperation?) in a corporate environment.