A NEW APPROACH
Based on what she and others have learned about how teenagers react to risky choices, Reyna, co-director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research at Cornell, and her colleague Charles Brainerd are testing a new approach to adolescent risk prevention.
She explained that as people grew older and more experienced, they became more intuitive, and more of their decisions were based on what she calls "gist," an overall sense of what is the best course of action.
This approach, in which "one sees the forest more than the trees," enables adults to reach the bottom line more quickly and, in the process, reduce their risky behaviors.
For example, while an adolescent might consider playing Russian roulette for a US$1 million payoff, a normal adult would not give it a moment's thought. Cutting directly to the chase, the adult would be more inclined to think: "No way! No amount of money is worth a one-in-six chance of dying."
"Young people don't get it," Reyna said. "They don't get the gist of a situation. Gist is based on one's culture, background and experiences, and experience is what teens lack."
A gist-based approach to decision making results in simple, black-and-white conclusions of good or bad, safe or dangerous, she and Farley wrote.
How can "gist" be created? After a young woman I knew became a paraplegic after swerving her car to avoid hitting a squirrel, I trained myself mentally not to brake or swerve in that situation, and I urged my sons and daughters-in-law to do the same. The gist here is that the life of a squirrel is not worth the possible consequences to me or anyone else on the road.
Likewise, in helping a teenage girl resist spontaneous, unprotected sex, a gist-based approach has her practicing ways to say "no" and not worry about losing her boyfriend. A 15-year-old who already had one unintended pregnancy and who participated in the "intuitive, gist-enhanced intervention program" that Reyna and Farley devised put it this way: "In talking about all the different ways to say 'no,' I've actually used them, which makes me feel much more comfortable. And I feel confident. I don't feel stupid by saying 'no.' And even if people think I'm stupid, that's their problem."
SUPERVISE THEM
Teenagers need "practice at recognizing cues in the environment that signal possible danger before it's too late to act," the two experts urged in a 44-page review of adolescent decision making published in September 2006 in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
At the same time, Reyna warned: "Younger adolescents don't learn from consequences as well as older adolescents do. So rather than relying on them to make reasoned choices or to learn from the school of hard knocks, a better approach is to supervise them."
In other words, young teenagers need to be protected from themselves by removing opportunities for risk-taking - for example, by filling their time with positive activities and protecting them from risky situations that are likely to be tempting or that require "behavioral inhibition."
A young teenage girl should not be left alone in the house with her boyfriend, and responsible adults should be omnipresent and alcohol absent when teenagers have parties.
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