Kate Mills, Anne-Lise Goddings and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore wanted to show how social factors can affect risky decision-making. To make decisions, we always weigh the pros and the cons : It is the rational way. But, sometimes, despite we do not even make the rational decision because of social influence. Adolescents are particularly sensitive to social influence.
The specificity of adolescents is that they are more looking for peer acceptance and they really want to avoid social exclusion. Because of those particularity, adolescents are able to take risks that they didn’t take on their own when they are with their friends. For example, they can experimenting with drugs if their friends ask them to do it. In this kind of situation, for adolescents saying no is taking a social risk.
It corresponds in social psychology to study the influence of the groups, the behaviour of people when they are in crowds. When we do something wrong in a group, it is possible to feel less responsibility, the responsibility is divide by the number of people.Social influence can also be observed in situation where people are watched by someone when they are doing a task. People do not perform the same way if they are observed or not. It is called the “audience effect”.
There are large individual differences in adolescent behaviour but we don’t know yet why some adolescents takes more risks than others. A few studies shows a correlation between taking risks at adolescence and entrepreneurial careers at adulthood for men.
Capacity to adapt our behaviour because of social influence also reflect a human capacity of adaptation which can be useful if an adolescent move out in a country with another culture for exemple. Moreover, if social influence lead adolescents to take risks, it can also prevent adolescents from taking risks in some situations.
If adolescents are particularly sensitive to social influence, called the “social factor”, we have to keep in mind that this factor influences all of us.
We agree with that, adolescence is a period of change.It is a period between childhood and adulthood. Teenagers develop their personality, a lot of physical and mental modifications occur. The adolescent becomes autonomous and independent from his parents and he needs to have support from his peers. That is why social influence is really important during that moment. Try out allow us to learn about yourself. During adolescence we acquire norm of the society, we test our personals limitations. Psychologist has to take care of adolescents, to learn about their development and to know that adolescence can be source of anxiety.
Key words : adolescence ; social factor ; risky behaviour
Vocabulary :
Risky decision making : prendre des risques
Audience effect : effet de groupe
to weigh the pros and the cons : peser le pour et le contre
crowd : foule
Gaëlle BAROTIN
Hélène CORBILLE
Laetitia BARRE
M2 PEADID