Beyond invulnerability: The importance of benefits in adolescents' decision to drink alcohol.

Abstract

Some investigators propose that adolescents engage in risky behaviors mainly because they perceive themselves to be invulnerable to risk. However, studies have typically not included perceived benefits. In the current study, 5th, 7th, and 9th graders were surveyed about their perceptions of and experience with alcohol and tobacco. Results indicated that perceptions of the benefits were significantly related to drinking and smoking 6 months later, over and above perceptions of the risks, age of the respondent, and experience level. Further, the importance of benefits was replicated across 3 separate analyses. Experience with alcohol alone, especially positive experience, was also related to perception and behavior. These findings are discussed in terms of how to improve messages and influence adolescents' decisions regarding risk-taking behaviors.

Texting While Driving and Other Risky Motor Vehicle Behaviors Among US High School Students

“…16,27,28 However, teenagers who engage in these behaviors may tend to view them as being less of a safety risk than teenagers who do not engage in them, 28 possibly because those who perceive greater emotional and social rewards associated with the behaviors are more likely to also perceive the benefits of these rewards outweigh the risks involved. [29][30][31][32] Teenagers may also believe that injury or misfortune results only from regular risk behavior participation and that, conversely, occasional participation will not result in harm. 33 These findings help explain why educational approaches alone are largely ineffective in reducing adolescent risk behaviors and point to the importance of fully implementing strategies proven to reduce crash risk among teenage drivers, such as graduated driver' s licensing systems and minimum legal drinking age laws.…”

A test of the efficacy of a brief, web-based personalized feedback intervention to reduce drinking among 9th grade students

“…Adolescent risk-taking behavior is also more likely to occur in groups than that of adults (Chassin, Pitts, & Prost, 2002). In addition, perceptions of peer drinking (Arata, Stafford, & Timms, 2003;Bekman, Cummins, & Brown, 2010;D'Amico & McCarthy, 2006) and positive expectancies regarding alcohol (Goldberg, Halpern-Felsher, & Millstein, 2002) have been identified as risk factors for drinking in adolescence. These findings suggest that adolescent risk taking behaviors are socio-emotional in nature, indicating the need for prevention and intervention efforts that provide information that is socially and emotionally relevant to adolescents, as well as targeting normative beliefs and positive alcohol beliefs and expectancies.…”

Risk taking under the influence: A fuzzy-trace theory of emotion in adolescence

“…Teaching adolescents how to quickly and automatically identify a risk increases the likelihood that their search for specific relevant knowledge is direct and motivated, and decreases the likelihood that their incidental feeling states will influence judgment and decision making. Viewed through a different but complementary lens, intervention approaches could focus on inculcating stable gist representations of benefits as there is evidence that perceived benefits (in addition to perceived risks) predict risk taking (e.g., Goldberg, Halpern-Felsher, & Millstein, 2002;Halpern-Felsher et al, 2004; for a review see Reyna & Farley, 2006). Adolescents may be motivated to engage in a risky behavior because they focus on some benefit that will result (e.g., social acceptance, popularity).…”