Social contextual risk taking in adolescence

Abstract

Adolescence is a time of heightened risk-taking behaviours. Such risk taking does not occur in a vacuum because most decisions of adolescents to engage in risky behaviours are shaped by their social environment. These risk-taking behaviours also change across adolescence, in line with the development of their underlying brain structure and function. In this Review, we discuss how adolescents take risks that affect themselves (self-oriented risks) by using social contextual information (risks that affect themselves in the presence of their peers or parents) and how adolescents take risks that affect others (other-oriented risks), whereby the target of their risk taking serves as the social contextual information (risks that affect their peers or parents). Self-oriented and other-oriented risks are shaped by reconfigurations in brain systems implicated in processing affective-salience, cognitive control and social cognition. Given the developmental changes in self-oriented and other-oriented processes across adolescence, we also discuss how both the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ are integrated into the social contextual risk taking of adolescents throughout this period of development.