Andrews Jack L, Foulkes Lucy E, Bone Jessica K, Blakemore Sarah-Jayne
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AZ, UK.
Department of Psychiatry, University College London, London W1T 7BN, UK.
Brain Sci. 2020 Jun 23;10(6):397. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10060397.
In adolescence, there is a heightened propensity to take health risks such as smoking, drinking or driving too fast. Another facet of risk taking, social risk, has largely been neglected. A social risk can be defined as any decision or action that could lead to an individual being excluded by their peers, such as appearing different to one's friends. In the current study, we developed and validated a measure of concern for health and social risk for use in individuals of 11 years and over (N = 1399). Concerns for both health and social risk declined with age, challenging the commonly held stereotype that adolescents are less worried about engaging in risk behaviours, compared with adults. The rate of decline was steeper for social versus health risk behaviours, suggesting that adolescence is a period of heightened concern for social risk. We validated our measure against measures of rejection sensitivity, depression and risk-taking behaviour. Greater concern for social risk was associated with increased sensitivity to rejection and greater depressed mood, and this association was stronger for adolescents compared with adults. We conclude that social risks should be incorporated into future models of risk-taking behaviour, especially when they are pitted against health risks.
在青春期，人们有更高的倾向去冒健康风险，比如吸烟、饮酒或超速驾驶。冒险行为的另一个方面，即社会风险，在很大程度上被忽视了。社会风险可以被定义为任何可能导致个人被同龄人排斥的决定或行为，比如在朋友面前显得与众不同。在当前的研究中，我们开发并验证了一种用于11岁及以上个体（N = 1399）的健康和社会风险关注量表。对健康和社会风险的关注都随着年龄的增长而下降，这挑战了一种普遍存在的刻板印象，即与成年人相比，青少年对参与风险行为的担忧更少。社会风险行为的下降速度比健康风险行为更陡峭，这表明青春期是对社会风险高度关注的时期。我们对照拒绝敏感性、抑郁和冒险行为的量表对我们的量表进行了验证。对社会风险的更大关注与对拒绝的更高敏感性和更严重的抑郁情绪相关，并且这种关联在青少年中比在成年人中更强。我们得出结论，社会风险应该被纳入未来的冒险行为模型中，尤其是当它们与健康风险相权衡时。
