Making even a small social mistake can feel painful. The flip side of this increased sensitivity is greater attention to the pain of social rejection and exclusion during adolescence. We’re able to quickly learn the nuances of social contexts in ways that help prepare us for the complexities of the adult world. This sensitivity helps drive the tremendous amount of social learning that happens during adolescence, helping us adapt to new environments and novel situations by tuning in and responding to social and emotional cues, like facial expressions, faster than an adult might. The amygdala-the part of the brain involved in processing and recognizing positive and negative emotion-is highly sensitive to social cues during adolescence.
The most significant changes to the brain during adolescence affect some of the networks involved in processing emotions, understanding other people, and guiding our behavior. Adults can help youth learn to manage emotions and make good decisions by modeling positive coping skills and providing real-world practice to make decisions and handle the outcomes.These help us solve problems and reason as well as (and sometimes better than) adults when we have the time and space to consider our options. Our abilities to think abstractly and understand the perspectives of others increase rapidly throughout adolescence.Our sensitivity to peer acceptance can make us more likely to make risky decisions when our emotions are high–including positive decisions like advocating for a cause or sticking up for a friend.We’re also experiencing strong emotions like falling in love or heartbreak for the first time. We’re more sensitive to social feedback during adolescence, which helps us adapt quickly but can also make rejection and exclusion feel particularly painful during these years.Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(2), 116-122.What the research tells us about decision making and navigating strong emotions during adolescence: Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 27(2), 416-430. Developmental trends and individual differences in brain systems involved in intertemporal choice during adolescence. R., Mackiewicz Seghete, K., Du, Y., & Claus, E. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 43, 100790. Neural activity moderates the association between sleep and risky driving behaviors in adolescence. Adolescents’ inhibitory control: Keep it cool or lose control.
Īïte, A., Cassotti, M., Linzarini, A., Osmont, A., Houdé, O., & Borst, G. Frontostriatal white matter integrity predicts development of delay of gratification: A longitudinal study. © 2021 Society for Research on Adolescence.Īchterberg, M., Peper, J. We conclude with a discussion of potential avenues for future research.Īdolescence decision making development. While these features manifest in negative, health-compromising ways (e.g., risky driving and criminal behavior), they also foster growth and exploration.
That is, characteristics of adolescence, including impulsivity, the importance of peers, and novelty seeking, are normative, evolutionarily advantageous, and essential for positive development. We also discuss the reconceptualization of adolescent behavior, including risk taking, as adaptive. While the decision-making process is similar for adolescents and adults in contexts that encourage deliberation and reflection, adolescents and adults differ in contexts which preclude deliberation vis-à-vis high emotional arousal. In this review article, we summarize several themes evident in the field of developmental science including the redefinition of adolescence and the ways in which adolescent decision-making capabilities converge with or diverge from those of adults. Research in the past decade has highlighted the nuances of adolescent decision making.
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