Multiple pathways of risk taking in adolescence

In this review, we describe multiple pathways that may lead to risk-taking in adolescence. We review behavioral and neuroimaging studies showing heightened risk-taking tendencies and associated neural reward activity in mid to late adolescence, but evidence points to risk taking as highly context and sample dependent. Here, we suggest that individual differences, specifically reward drive, may be a differential susceptibility factor that shows heightened sensitivity in adolescents and that makes some adolescents more sensitive to their environment. Furthermore, we review evidence that an elevated reward drive in mid-adolescence in interaction with prosocial and cognitive development can lead to various trajectories of risk taking. In this review we propose to extend existing models with individual-difference factors, specifically reward drive, and accompanying developmental processes, including cognitive control and prosocial development, that drive the development of multiple pathways of risk taking.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Developmental Review

• Publication date

  2021-12-01

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.dr.2021.100996
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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