Participating in risky behaviors seems to be a component of individuals’s daily lives, however, adolescence is an especially magnified time for potentially dangerous actions. Such questionable behavior associated with teenagers consists of alcohol and drug use, improvident driving, as well as neglectful sexual actions. These actions are believed to have increased during this period because teenagers’ awareness of what is around them is perceived to be less sharp in hazardous situations in comparison to adults. Teenagers are believed to overestimate their control in dangerous situations, leading to risky behavior.
However, scientists who study and analyze the decisions teenagers make, are now reprimanding this prevalent theory. Although young adults are known to disregard hazards in situations, contrary to popular belief, they are also known to overestimate the risks of situations as well. Therefore, the risky actions teenagers tend to lure towards cannot be explained through the act of underestimation in possibly dangerous situations.
But what does make teenagers act out in these certain actions in what seems to be more than the average adult? One of the potential answers researchers may have found is how peers can influence a teenager’s actions. Young adults tend to spend much more of their time with their friends rather than their family during this period in their lives. Therefore, this leads to more possible conformity to fit in and have friends. When one yearns for the need to belong and feel accepted, they tend to fall into pressure more easily.
Although these accusations sound accurate, it is still up in the air as to what the role of social influence has on young adolescents. Leading to psychological scientist, Lisa Knoll and her colleagues, at the University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, to begin the process of figuring out the correlation between social influence and adolescent’s sense of risk perception. Knoll and her colleagues were looking to see if social conformity differs depending on who is influencing one another. The main takeaway they were looking for was to see if teenagers are more heavily influenced by other’s perceptions, and if they are, who is most influential to them? Going along with these questions, the researchers also wanted to know if social influence declines as one gets older.
Knoll and her colleagues studied and investigated social influence on risk perception across development from late childhood to adulthood. They then recruited 563 volunteers between the ages of 8 to 59 years old. The volunteers were asked to review several various scenarios that were considered “risky,” and included a potential health risk, such as cycling with no helmet or climbing on top of a roof. The participants then ranked the specific scenarios from low to high on their perception of “risks.” The researchers predicted that adults would be more influenced by other adults rather than teenagers and that adolescents would be more heavily influenced by teenagers than adults.
When all of the participants ranked their original answers, they were then shown the way others ranked the risky scenes. However, the ratings the volunteers saw were not real ratings, the researchers concocted them for the study, to see if others’ opinions would influence them differently the second time. Knoll and her colleagues were curious to see who reconstructed their perceptions to conform, as well as who influenced this change.
The researchers hypothesized that teenagers would be more influenced by other teenagers in comparison to adults. However, the results found were astonishing and concise. No matter the age group, people were influenced by others’ perceptions, altering their original ratings to conform more to others. Even the older adults displayed conformity, despite social influence diminishing from childhood. The teenagers in the older range were influenced equally by adults and their peers of their age. The teenagers that were only in the younger spectrum showed a stronger influence from their peers.
The evidence found from this study suggests that the time from childhood to adolescence proves to be a crucial period in the development of risk perception. This also shows that early adolescence is the time in one’s life when teens value their peer's opinions more than their own, leading to more conformity during this time in their lives.
As always there are limitations that come along with studies. In this study, participants were grabbed from one location on one day, and it was not repeated. For more specific and detail-oriented results, Knoll and her colleagues could have gone to different locations throughout a certain period to make sure the results from the first study were consistent throughout each trial.
If there were to be follow-up studies, researchers could explore conformity throughout various countries. If one were to do this study in a different country they could potentially find extremely different results because conformity is not consistent throughout the world. Another idea for a follow-up study would be to hone in on certain ethnicities and to vary the results among the different ethnicities. I think that the results could potentially vary a lot, and could be an interesting way to perceive teenagers and social influence as well.
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Essay on Conformity in Teens.
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