Why Teens Take Stupid Chances..?

Though teenagers are known to indulge in crazy stuff like taking drugs and going for unprotected sex, a new study says they ponder about risks more than adults.

The study finds teens spend more time weighing risk than adults and in fact often overestimate the odds of a bad outcome, reports LiveScience. But the desire for acceptance among peers wins out in the decision-making process of a young mind. Cornell University researcher Valerie Reyna and Frank Farley of Temple University conducted a review of scientific studies on the topics.

Compared to adults, teens take about 170 milliseconds more weighing the pros and cons of engaging in high-risk behaviour, the researchers conclude. Adults scarcely think about risk, perhaps because they think they recognise risk intuitively. Teens, on the other hand, take time to mull the risk against benefit equation.

“In other words, more experienced decision-makers tend to rely more on fuzzy reasoning, processing situations and problems as gists rather than weighing multiple factors,” Reyna said.

Teens often decide that the benefits of risky behaviour immediate gratification or peer acceptance — outweigh the risks, Reyna said. She figures its better to teach teens some “gist-based” thinking skills, such as putting risks into general categories rather than lecturing with specific data and details. The results, announced this week, were published in Psychological Science.

In another study, she found that doctors make better decisions by processing less information and making sharper black-and-white distinctions among decision-making options. “This leads to better decisions, not only in everyday life but also in places like emergency rooms where the speed and quality of risky decisions are critical,” she said