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EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 22, 2013

www.edweek.org

Study: Teenagers’ Brains Are Wired for Peer Approval
Risk-taking rises
with an audience
By Sarah D. Sparks
It’s true: Adolescents really do
want to jump off a bridge just because their friends are doing it. But
new research suggests changes in
how teenagers view risks and rewards around their peers are not
only a critical part of their development, but may also provide a key to
motivating them.
From the dare anti-drug program to abstinence-only curricula, education has been full of
high-profile attempts to curtail
risky behavior that have met with
mixed success at best. The emerging evidence suggests, however,
that changing teenagers’ behavior demands accounting for their
social circles, not just asking them
to stand up to their peers.
In an ongoing series of studies,
Temple University researchers
Laurence Steinberg and Jason M.
Chein and their colleagues have
found that teenagers take more
risks and are more sensitive to potential rewards when they think
peers are watching them—even
if they consciously believe they
aren’t affected by peer pressure.
“Although it’s very, very tempting
to assign consciousness to teenagers’ motivations and behavior—to
say they are doing something be-

cause ‘they don’t understand the
consequences,’ ‘they think they are
invincible,’ ‘they want to impress
their friends’—what we think we’re
finding is [risk-taking] has a much
more biological basis to it,” said Mr.
Chein, the director of Temple University’s Neurocognition Lab.
In studies discussed in the April
special issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science on
“the teenage brain,” the Temple
researchers found 14- to 16-yearolds take significantly more risks,
and are more responsive to potential rewards, when other teenagers are around than when they
are by themselves.
“In the same way a young child
is developing in the context of her
family environment, a middle
schooler and high schooler is developing in the context of peers,” said
Kevin M. King, an assistant professor of psychology at the University
of Washington in Seattle, who was
not part of the Temple research.
“There are huge changes in the
social environment,” he said. “[Adolescents] are going from one classroom to many, from parents’ making all the early friendship choices
to making [their] own.”

Focused on Rewards
And that new freedom to make
their own choices comes just when
students start taking more risks
in the company of peers.
Mr. Steinberg, a psychology pro-

Education WEEk

fessor at Temple, and Mr. Chein
presented study participants with a
game in which a player was shown
a card labeled with a number between one and nine, and had to
guess whether the next card would
be higher or lower, with players told

“

[W]hat we
think we’re
finding is [risktaking] has
a much more
biological
basis to it.”

JASON M. CHEIN
Temple University

before some rounds that they would
receive a reward or no reward for a
correct guess.
The game was rigged: A computer
randomly ensured each player
guessed right exactly half the time.
The participants played under
functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fmri, which measures electrical activity in the brain, allowing
the researchers to gauge how much
players were responding to the possibility of rewards.
Both adults and adolescents had

WEBINAR

more brain activity for a potential
reward than for none, but teenagers showed significantly higher response to potential rewards when
they were told (untruthfully) that
another teenager was watching
from another room. Adults, by contrast, showed no change when told
of being watched.
The findings build on a 2009
study by Mr. Steinberg that
found, among 14- to 16-year-olds,
younger teenagers took twice as
many risks in a timed driving
simulation when with peers than
when tested alone. Older teenagers took 50 percent more risks
when doing the simulation course
with friends than alone.

Channeling Peer Power
In a study of binge drinking, Mr. King found adolescents
who are deciding to drink weigh
negative effects such as having a
hangover or getting in a fight less
than they weigh perceived social
benefits, such as increased confidence and the ability to speak
with others.
Both the Temple and University
of Washington researchers are
separately exploring interventions
to help teenagers take a step back
mentally in social situations, turning an emotional decision into a
more rational one.
Mr. Steinberg’s previous studies
have found that teenagers do fine
on tasks that require just atten-

tion and working memory when
their peers are around, as long as
they don’t involve risk and reward.
Fifteen-year-olds were better at
basic inhibitory-control tasks than
10-year-olds, and less adept than
adults, while teenagers are more
sensitive to risk and reward than
either children or adults.
For interventions to stop risky
behavior, Mr. Chein said, “it’s
not that you are trying to convince the individual that they
shouldn’t be influenced by their
peers; they’re not aware at a conscious level of the impact peers
are having on them.” Rather than
focus on preventing adolescents
from doing bad things, Mr. Chein
suggested that educators focus
on leveraging positive peer pressure: “When adolescents are with
their peers, they’re more likely to
pursue rewards, and those can be
academic rewards.”
Programs that give students
“social rewards,” such as leadership opportunities and chances to
meet other students in ways that
improve their social status—such
as peer-discipline courts—can
channel adolescents’ natural inclinations positively, researchers
have found.
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link
to “The Teenage Brain:
Peer Influences on
Adolescent Decision Making.”
www.edweek.org/links.

> www.edweek.org/go/webinars

BLENDED
LEARNING
in the

Math
Classroom
In this webinar, our guests will explore
the different blended-learning models
that schools are using to support
math instruction. They’ll discuss
national trends emerging around
blended-learning math programs, as
well as take an up-close look at the
challenges and successes one school
has experienced with the blended
math model.

REGISTRATION
IS FREE!
Thursday, May 30, 2013
2 to 3 p.m. ET

PRESENTERS:

www.edweek.org/go/
webinar/BlendedMath

KAYLIE DIENELT REED
lead teacher, Acton Academy, Austin, Texas

LIVE OR ON-DEMAND

HEATHER STAKER
education senior research fellow, Innosight
Institute, and co-author, Innosight research
report “Classifying K-12 Blended Learning”

MODERATOR
LIANA HEITIN
associate editor, Education Week Teacher

Education Week - May 22, 2013

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