Teens, friends and taking risks

Introduction: Researchers tested whether having friends watch changes how much risk teenagers and adults take while driving.

Participants: Sixty teenagers aged 16 to 18 and 60 adults aged 25 to 35 in Pennsylvania, all with a driver's license (half female in each age group). Each participant brought two friends of the same age. Race/ethnicity was not reported.

Method: Participants drove a computer driving game along a route with 20 traffic lights that turned yellow as the car approached. Stopping cost time; driving through the yellow light saved time but risked a crash with a car crossing the intersection. Participants were randomly assigned to drive either alone or with their two friends watching from the same room. The friends were told only to watch.

Results and Discussion: Teenagers drove through 41% of yellow lights when friends were watching, compared with 27% when alone, and crashed more often with friends watching. Adults drove through 24% of yellow lights with friends watching and 22% when alone, a difference that was not statistically significant.

Introduction: Researchers tested whether peers can also encourage teenagers to take helpful risks, such as trying a challenge they might fail.

Participants: Ninety students aged 13 to 15 (47 girls and 43 boys) at middle schools in Barcelona, Spain, with parental consent. Race/ethnicity was not reported.

Method: Students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the alone condition, students worked by themselves. In the two peer conditions, students worked while two same-age students, actually helpers trained by the researchers, sat nearby. In the effort-valuing peer condition, the helpers had just said they liked trying hard problems "even if you mess up". In the neutral peer condition, they talked about the weather. Each student then chose between an easy math puzzle that was almost certain to be solved and a hard puzzle that earned triple points but would probably be failed, with the result shown on a screen everyone could see.

Results and Discussion: In the effort-valuing peer condition, 64% of students chose the hard puzzle, compared with 41% in the alone condition and 44% in the neutral peer condition. The difference between the effort-valuing peer condition and the other two was statistically significant.

Introduction: Researchers followed young teenagers for three years to see which beliefs predicted vaping.

Participants: 1,820 students in Ontario, Canada, first surveyed at age 13 and again at age 16 (52% girls). Race/ethnicity was not reported.

Method: At age 13, students answered anonymous questions, including whether they thought their close friends would approve of vaping and how much they agreed with the statement "Bad things that happen to other people who take risks probably won't happen to me." At age 16, students reported whether they had vaped in the past month.

Results and Discussion: Of students who at 13 believed their friends would approve of vaping, 28% vaped at 16, compared with 9% of students who believed their friends would disapprove. Students who strongly agreed that bad things probably wouldn't happen to them were also more likely to vape at 16 (24%) than those who disagreed (10%). Both relationships were statistically significant even when the researchers took into account whether the students' parents vaped.