Department of Psychology, Temple University, USA.
Dev Sci. 2014 Jan;17(1):71-8. doi: 10.1111/desc.12099. Epub 2013 Nov 6.
Research suggests that the presence of peers influences adolescent risk-taking by increasing the perceived reward value of risky decisions. While prior work has involved observation of participants by their friends, the current study examined whether observation by an anonymous peer could elicit similarly increased reward sensitivity. Late adolescent participants completed a delay discounting task either alone or under the belief that performance was being observed from a neighboring room by an unknown viewer of the same gender and age. Even in this limited social context, participants demonstrated a significantly increased preference for smaller, immediate rewards when they believed that they were being watched. This outcome challenges several intuitive accounts of the peer effect on adolescent risk-taking, and indicates that the peer influence on reward sensitivity during late adolescence is not dependent on familiarity with the observer. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of social influences on adolescents' risky behavior.
研究表明，同伴的存在会通过增加风险决策的感知回报价值来影响青少年的冒险行为。虽然之前的研究涉及到朋友对参与者的观察，但本研究考察了一个匿名同伴的观察是否也能引起类似的回报敏感性增加。青少年晚期的参与者在独自或认为自己的表现正在被同性别和年龄的未知观察者从隔壁房间观察的情况下完成了延迟折扣任务。即使在这种有限的社交环境中，当参与者认为自己被观察时，他们表现出明显更喜欢较小的即时奖励。这一结果挑战了几种关于同伴对青少年冒险行为影响的直观解释，并表明在青少年晚期，同伴对奖励敏感性的影响并不依赖于对观察者的熟悉程度。这些发现对我们理解社会对青少年冒险行为的影响既有理论意义，也有实际意义。
