Adolescents display distinctive tolerance to ambiguity and to uncertainty during risky decision making

Abstract

Although actuarial data indicate that risk-taking behavior peaks in adolescence, laboratory evidence for this developmental spike remains scarce. One possible explanation for this incongruity is that in the real world adolescents often have only vague information about the potential consequences of their behavior and the likelihoods of those consequences, whereas in the lab these are often clearly stated. How do adolescents behave under such more realistic conditions of ambiguity and uncertainty? We asked 105 participants aged from 8 to 22 years to make three types of choices: (1) choices between options whose possible outcomes and probabilities were fully described (choices under risk); (2) choices between options whose possible outcomes were described but whose probability information was incomplete (choices under ambiguity), and (3) choices between unknown options whose possible outcomes and probabilities could be explored (choices under uncertainty). Relative to children and adults, two adolescent-specific markers emerged. First, adolescents were more accepting of ambiguity; second, they were also more accepting of uncertainty (as indicated by shorter pre-decisional search). Furthermore, this tolerance of the unknown was associated with motivational, but not cognitive, factors. These findings offer novel insights into the psychology of adolescent risk taking.

When do peers influence adolescent males' risk taking? Examining decision making under conditions of risk and ambiguity

“…Participants demonstrated higher levels of gambling behavior when probability distributions involved in the option with the variable outcome were unknown to them than when these were available, supporting Hypothesis 1. This finding is consistent with previous literature, which has examined differences in developmental decision making between conditions of risk and ambiguity (Osmont et al, ; van den Bos & Van den Bos & Hertwig, ). The present study also manipulated whether participants completed the task within a group, to examine whether this influenced decision making.…”

“…The primary aim of this study was to examine the interaction between situational ambiguity, group decision making, and developmental factors. We first predict that adolescents are more likely to gamble in conditions of ambiguity rather than in risk (Hypothesis 1; see van den Bos & Van den Bos & Hertwig, ). Whether the task was completed alone or in a group was manipulated, as peers increase adolescents' risk behavior across a breadth of risk‐taking conditions (Albert et al, ).…”

“…Decision making in conditions of ambiguity therefore relies on different psychological mechanisms compared with conditions of risk (Tversky & Kahneman, ). Consistent with this view, research has found no correlation between risk and ambiguity attitudes (van den Bos & Van den Bos & Hertwig, ), and gambling under these two conditions activates different neural regions (Huettel et al, ). Thus, although the ability to understand probability to maximize expected value increases linearly with age, there is still limited understanding about how ambiguity attitudes develop across the lifespan.…”

“…Recently, it has been suggested that situational conditions influence adolescents' likelihood of engaging in risky actions (Romer, Reyna, & Satterthwaite, ). These researchers propose that when the probabilities involved in outcomes of a decision are hidden and thus ambiguous, adolescents are more likely to opt for these choices than when probabilities are known (van den Bos & Van den Bos & Hertwig, ). Although evidence has begun to emerge in support of this phenomenon, adolescents' tolerance for ambiguity has yet to be examined within the context of social and developmental changes that occur during this period.…”

“…This economic task is a particularly strong measure of decision making, as it allows for direct comparison between risk and ambiguity attitudes using identical probability distributions. Further, adolescents' ambiguity tolerance on the task has shown a relationship to real‐world risk‐taking behavior (van den Bos & Van den Bos & Hertwig, ). Although there are a number of other established tasks that similarly claim to measure ambiguity attitudes (e.g., the Iowa Gambling Task; Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 2005), the extent to which these truly capture this condition of decision making has been subject to criticism (see Dunn, Dalgleish, & Lawrence, ).…”