Adolescents' AIDS risk taking: A rational choice perspective

Abstract

Many expens (Brooks-Gunn, Boyer, and Hein, 1988;Melton, 1988;Turner, Miller, and Moses, 1989) and a few public leaders (Koop, 1988) are fearful that the 1990s will see many adolescents become infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). These infections will occur because some adoIescents engage in risky sexual and drug-related behaviors (Millstein, this volume) and because, unfortunately, many will not receive clear warnings, including specific behavioral strategies for preventing infection (Wilcox, this volume). But even among those adolescents who receive candid information about AIDS risks and how to avoid them, some will become infected because they fail to practice AIDS prevention behaviors. Of course, many adults also ignore disease-preventive messages, but there is particular concern that young people will recklessly expose themselves to AIDS risks.There is abundant evidence that adolescents take serious risks with their health, as compared with both adults and younger children. In 1985, the primary causes of mortality among fifteen-to twenty-four-year-olds were accidents (54 percent), suicides (14 percent), and homicides (11 percent) (Blum, 1987;Halperin, Bass, Mehta, and Betts, 1983; Millstein, 1989), events that either result ti-om or are closely related to behavioral choices. Millstein (this volume) reviews data on the sexual behavior of adolescents and the morbidity they experience due to sexually transmitted diseases. Young people also experience more accidents than adults (US.We thank the many friends who have commented on previous presentations of these ideas, including

Adolescent development and risk of injury: using developmental science to improve interventions: Figure 1

“…For example, students who perceive benefits from behaviours such as smoking and drinking are more likely to adopt these behaviours than their peers 42. In addition, adolescents may weigh proximal consequences more heavily than distal ones when making decisions 43. Thus, prevention strategies that focus on the long-term costs of potentially injurious behaviours may be undermined when teens focus, instead, on short-term benefits.…”

Attachment and time preference

“…The first is that such individual differences are known to have important effects on behavior in many species, including humans. Impulsiveness, for example, has been implicated in such pressing individual and social concerns as drug addiction, HIV infection, young male violence, teenage pregnancy, high infant mortality, crime, and low educational attainment (e.g., Ainslie 1975Ainslie , 1992Gardner 1993;Gardner and Herman 1990;Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990;Green et al 1994;Lawrence 1991;Loewenstein and Elster 1992;Logue 1988;Maital and Maital 1977;O'Rand and Ellis 1974;Rogers 1994;Vila 1994;Daly 1985, 1997;Wilson and Herrnstein 1985). Moreover, individual differences in time preference are heavily influenced by environmental risk and uncertainty.…”

Incentive-Elicited Brain Activation in Adolescents: Similarities and Differences from Young Adults

“…Compared with adults, adolescents: (1) are less apt to consider the negative repercussions of rewarded behavior in hypothetical scenarios (Tangney et al, 1996;Reppucci, 1999), (2) base decisions on temporally proximal outcomes rather than distal outcomes (Gardner and Herman, 1991), and (3) in some contexts, are better motivated by reward than by negative reinforcement (Gardner and Herman, 1991;Arnett, 1992). Here, we explored whether adolescents differ from young adults in cue-elicited activation of mesolimbic motivational circuitry.…”