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Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2013 April ; 22(2): 114–120. doi:10.1177/0963721412471347.

Peer Influences on Adolescent Decision Making

Dustin Albert,
Duke University

Jason Chein, and

Temple University

Laurence Steinberg
Temple University

Abstract
Research efforts to account for elevated risk behavior among adolescents have arrived at an
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exciting new stage. Moving beyond laboratory studies of age differences in “cool” cognitive
processes related to risk perception and reasoning, new approaches have shifted focus to the
influence of social and emotional factors on adolescent neurocognition. We review recent research
suggesting that adolescent risk-taking propensity derives in part from a maturational gap between
early adolescent remodeling of the brain's socio-emotional reward system and a gradual,
prolonged strengthening of the cognitive control system. At a time when adolescents spend an
increasing amount of time with their peers, research suggests that peer-related stimuli may
sensitize the reward system to respond to the reward value of risky behavior. As the cognitive
control system gradually matures over the course of the teenage years, adolescents grow in their
capacity to coordinate affect and cognition, and to exercise self-regulation even in emotionally
arousing situations. These capacities are reflected in gradual growth in the capacity to resist peer
influence.

“…it seems like people accept you more if you're, like, a dangerous driver or
something. If there is a line of cars going down the road and the other lane is clear
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and you pass eight cars at once, everybody likes that. […] If my friends are with
me in the car, or if there are a lot of people in the line, I would do it, but if I'm by
myself and I didn't know anybody then I wouldn't do it. That's no fun.'”
Anonymous teenager, as reported in The Culture of
Adolescent Risk-Taking (Lightfoot, 1997; p.10)

It is well-established that adolescents are more likely than children or adults to take risks, as
evinced by elevated rates of experimentation with alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, unprotected
sexual activity, violent and nonviolent crime, and reckless driving (Steinberg, 2008). Early
research efforts to identify the distinguishing cognitive immaturity underlying adolescents'
heightened risk-taking propensity bore little fruit. A litany of carefully-controlled laboratory
experiments contrasted adolescent and adult capacities to perceive and process fundamental
components of risk information, but found that adolescents possess the knowledge, values,

Corresponding Author: Laurence Steinberg, Temple University, Weiss Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19122, [email protected].
 Albert et al. Page 2

and processing efficiency to evaluate risky decisions as competently as adults (Reyna &
Farley, 2006).
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If adolescents are so risky in the real world, why do they appear so risk-averse in the lab?
We propose that the answer to this question is nicely illustrated by the American teenager
quoted above: “…if I'm by myself and I didn't know anybody then I wouldn't do it. That's no
fun.” If adolescents made all of their decisions involving drinking, driving, dalliances, and
delinquency in the cool isolation of an experimenter's testing room, those decisions would
likely appear as risk-averse as those of adults. But therein lies the rub: teenagers spend a
remarkable amount of time in the company of other teenagers. This paper describes a new
wave of research on the neurobehavioral substrates of adolescent decision making in peer
contexts suggesting that the company of other teenagers fundamentally alters the calculus of
adolescent risk taking.

Peer Influences on Adolescent Risk Behavior

Consistent with self-reports of lower resistance to peer influence among adolescents than
adults (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007), observational data point to the role of peer influences
as a primary contextual factor contributing to adolescents' heightened tendency to make
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risky decisions. For instance, crime statistics indicate that adolescents typically commit
delinquent acts in peer groups, whereas adults more frequently offend alone (Zimring,
1998). Furthermore, one of the strongest predictors of delinquent behavior in adolescence is
affiliation with delinquent peers, an association that has been attributed in varying
proportions to peer socialization (e.g., “deviancy training”; Dishion, Bullock, & Granic,
2002) and friendship choices, wherein risk-taking adolescents naturally gravitate toward one
another (e.g., Bauman & Ennett, 1996). Given the difficulty of distinguishing between these
causal alternatives with correlational data, our lab has pursued a program of experimental
research directly comparing the behavior of adolescents and adults when making decisions
either alone, or in the presence of their peers.

In the first experimental study to examine age differences in the effect of peer context on
risky decision making (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005), early adolescents (mean age = 14), late
adolescents (mean age = 19), and adults (mean age = 37) were tested on a computerized
driving task, called the “Chicken Game,” which challenges the driver to advance a vehicle
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as far as possible on the driving course, while avoiding a crash into a wall that could appear,
without warning, at any point on the course. Peer context was manipulated by randomly
assigning each group of three participants to play the game either individually (alone in the
room), or with two same-aged peers in the room. When tested alone, the participants from
each of the three age groups engaged in a comparable amount of risk taking. In contrast,
early adolescents scored twice as high on an index of risky driving when tested with their
peers in the room than when alone, whereas late adolescents were approximately 50%
riskier in groups, and adults showed no difference in risky driving related to social context.
The ongoing goal of our research program is to further specify the behavioral and neural
mechanisms of this peer effect on adolescent risk taking.

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A Neurodevelopmental Model of Peer Influences on Adolescent Decision

Making
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Building on extensive evidence demonstrating maturational changes in brain structure and

function occurring across the second decade of life (and frequently beyond), we have
advanced a neurodevelopmental account of heightened susceptibility to peer influence
among adolescents (Steinberg, 2008; Albert & Steinberg, 2011). In brief, we propose that,
among adolescents more than adults, the presence of peers “primes” a reward-sensitive
motivational state that increases the subjective value of immediately available rewards and
thereby increases the probability that adolescents will favor the short-term benefits of a risky
choice over the long-term value of a safe alternative. Although a comprehensive
presentation of the behavioral and neuroscientific evidence underlying this hypothesis is
beyond our current scope (but see Albert & Steinberg, 2011), a brief review of three
fundamental assumptions of this model will set the stage for a description of our peer
influence studies.

First, decisions are a product of both cognitive and affective input, even when affect is
unrelated to the choices under evaluation
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Research based on adult populations has identified several pathways by which affect
influences decision making (Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001). For instance, the
anticipated emotional outcome of a behavioral option -- how one expects to feel after
making a given choice --contributes to one's cognitive assessment of its expected value.
Indeed, affective states may influence decision processing even when the source of the
affect is not directly related to the choices under evaluation. Such incidental affective
influences are apparent in experiments demonstrating the effect of pre-existing or
experimentally elicited affective states on adult perception, memory, judgment, and behavior
(Winkielman, Knutson, Paulus, & Trujillo, 2007). One experiment illustrating this effect
found that elicitation of incidental positive emotion (via presentation of masked happy
faces) caused participants to pour and drink more of a novel beverage than participants who
had viewed angry faces, despite no differences in self-reported emotion between the two
groups (Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005). Consistent with evidence for extensive
overlap in the neural circuitries implicated in the evaluation of socio-emotional and choice-
related incentive cues (e.g., ventral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex; for a recent
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review, see Falk, Way, & Jasinska, 2012), Winkielman and colleagues describe this priming
effect as an instance of approach sensitization. That is, neural responses to positively
valenced socio-emotional stimuli – in this case, responses not even reaching the level of
conscious awareness – may sensitize approach (i.e., “GO”) responding to unrelated
incentive cues. As we describe below, several characteristics of adolescent neurobehavioral
functioning suggest that this approach sensitization effect could be a particularly powerful
influence on adolescent decision making in peer contexts.

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Second, adolescents exhibit stronger “bottom-up” affective reactivity than adults in

response to socially relevant stimuli
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Whereas some controversy remains regarding the degree to which adolescents are more or
less sensitive than children and adults to non-social reward cues (Galvan, 2010; Spear,
2009), few scholars now dispute that adolescence is a period of peak neurobehavioral
sensitivity to social stimuli (Burnett, Sebastian, Kadosh, & Blakemore, 2011; Somerville,
this issue). Puberty-related increases in gonadal hormones have been linked to a
proliferation of receptors for oxytocin within subcortical and limbic circuits, including the
amygdala and striatum (Spear, 2009). Oxytocin neurotransmission has been implicated in a
variety of social behaviors, including facilitation of social bonding and recognition and
memory for positive social stimuli (Insel & Fernald, 2004). Alongside concurrent changes in
dopaminergic function within neural circuits broadly implicated in incentive processing
(Spear, 2009), these puberty-related increases in gonadal hormones and oxytocin receptor
density contribute to changes in a constellation of social behaviors observed in adolescence.

Peer relations are never more salient than in adolescence. In addition to a puberty-related
spike in interest in opposite-sex relationships, adolescents spend more time than children or
adults interacting with peers, report the highest degree of happiness when in peer contexts,
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and assign greatest priority to peer norms for behavior (Brown & Larson, 2009). This
developmental peak in affiliation motivation appears highly conserved across species:
Adolescent rats also spend more time than younger or older rats interacting with peers, while
showing evidence that such interactions are highly rewarding (Doremus-Fitzwater,
Varlinskaya, & Spear, 2010). Moreover, several developmental neuroimaging studies
indicate that, relative to children and adults, adolescents show heightened neural activation
in response to a variety of social stimuli, such as facial expressions and social feedback
(Burnett et al., 2011). For instance, one of the first longitudinal neuroimaging studies of
early adolescence demonstrated a significant increase from ages 10 to 13 in ventral striatal
and ventral prefrontal reactivity to facial stimuli (Pfeifer et al., 2011). Together, this
evidence for hypersensitivity to social stimuli suggests that adolescents may be more likely
than adults to generate a baseline state of heightened approach motivation when exposed to
positively valenced peer stimuli in a decision-making scenario, thus setting the stage for an
exaggerated approach sensitization effect of peer context on risky decision making.
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Third, adolescents are less capable than adults of “top-down” cognitive control of
impulsive behavior
In contrast to the relatively sudden changes in social processing that occur around the time
of puberty, cognitive capacities supporting efficient self-regulation mature in a gradual,
linear pattern over the course of adolescence. In developmental parallel with structural brain
changes thought to support neural processing efficiency (e.g., increased axonal myelination),
adolescents show continued gains in response inhibition, planned problem solving, flexible
rule use, impulse control, and future orientation (Steinberg, 2008). Indeed, evidence is
growing for a direct link between structural and functional brain maturation during
adolescence and concurrent improvements in cognitive control. In addition to studies
correlating white matter maturation with age-related cognitive improvements (Schmithorst
& Yuan, 2010), developmental neuroimaging studies utilizing tasks requiring response

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inhibition (e.g., Go-No/Go, Stroop, flanker tasks, ocular antisaccade) describe relatively
inefficient recruitment by adolescents of the core neural circuitry supporting cognitive
control (e.g., lateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex) (Luna, Padmanabhan, &
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O'Hearn, 2010). Moreover, research on age differences in control-related network dynamics

demonstrate adolescent immaturity in the functional integration of neural signals deriving
from specialized cortical and subcortical “hub” regions (Stevens, 2009). This immature
capacity for functional integration may contribute to adolescent difficulties in
simultaneously evaluating social, affective, and cognitive factors relevant to a given
decision, particularly when social and emotional considerations are disproportionately
salient.

Identification of Mechanisms Underlying Peer Influences on Adolescent

Decision Making
In an effort to further specify the neurodevelopmental vulnerability underlying adolescent
susceptibility to peer influence, we have conducted a series of behavioral and neuroimaging
experiments comparing adolescent and adult decision making in variable social contexts.
Specifically, we have sought to determine whether the presence of peers biases adolescent
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decision making by (a) modulating responses to incentive cues, consistent with the approach
sensitization hypothesis, (b) disrupting inhibitory control, or (c) altering both of these
processes. As a first step in addressing this question, we conducted an experiment that
randomly assigned late adolescents (ages 18 and 19) to complete a series of tasks either
alone or in the presence of two same-age, same-sex peers. Risk-taking propensity was
assessed using the “Stoplight” game, a first-person driving game wherein participants must
advance through a series of intersections to reach a finish line as quickly as possible to
receive a monetary reward (Figure 1). Each intersection is marked by a stoplight that turns
yellow (and sometimes red) as the car approaches, and participants must decide to either “hit
the brakes” (and lose time while waiting for the light to turn green) or run the light (and risk
crashing while crossing through an intersection). We also administered tasks for cognitive
control (Go/No-Go) and preference for immediate-over-delayed rewards (Delay
Discounting). Whereas no group differences were evident on the Go/No-Go index of
inhibitory control, adolescents in the peer presence condition took more risks on the
Stoplight task (Albert et al., 2009) and indicated stronger preference for immediate-over-
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delayed rewards (O'Brien, Albert, Chein, & Steinberg, 2011), relative to adolescents who
completed the tasks alone.

Findings from a recent follow-up experiment suggest that peer observation influences
adolescents' decision making even when the peer is anonymous and not physically present in
the same room. Utilizing a counterbalanced, repeated-measures design, we assessed the task
performance of late adolescents once in a standard “alone” condition, and once in a
deception condition that elicited the impression that their task performance was being
observed by a same-age peer in an adjoining room. As predicted, participants exhibited
stronger preference for immediate rewards on a delay discounting task when they believed
they were being observed, relative to alone (Weigard, Chein, & Steinberg, 2011). Peer
observation also resulted in a higher rate of monetary gambles on a probabilistic gambling

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task, but only for participants with relatively lower self-reported resistance to peer influence
(Smith, Chein, & Steinberg, 2011). Along similar lines, Segalowitz et al. (2012) report that
individuals high in self-reported sensation seeking are especially susceptible to the peer
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effect on risk taking. Considered together, these behavioral results suggest that peer
presence increases adolescents' risk taking by increasing the salience (or subjective value) of
immediately available rewards, and that some adolescents are more susceptible to this effect
than others.

Our recent work has utilized brain imaging to more directly examine the neural dynamics
underlying adolescent susceptibility to peer influences. In the first of these studies, we
scanned adolescents and adults while they played the Stoplight game, again utilizing a
counterbalanced within-subjects design (Chein, Albert, O'Brien, Uckert, & Steinberg, 2011).
All subjects played the game in the scanner twice -- once in a standard “alone” condition,
and once in a “peer” condition, wherein they were made aware that their performance was
being observed on a monitor in a nearby room by two same-age, same-sex peers who had
accompanied them to the experiment. As predicted, adolescents but not adults took
significantly more risks when observed by peers than when alone (Figure 2). Furthermore,
analysis of neural activity during the decision-making epoch showed greater activation of
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brain structures implicated in reward valuation (ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex) for
adolescents in the peer relative to the alone scans, an effect that was not apparent for adults
(Figure 3). Indeed, the degree to which participants (across all ages) evinced peer-greater-
than- alone activation in the ventral striatum was inversely correlated with self-reported
resistance to peer influence (Figure 4). This study represents the first evidence that peer
presence accentuates risky decision making in adolescence by modulating activity in the
brain's reward valuation system.

Conclusions and Future Directions

Although our work to date has indicated that the effect of peers on adolescent risk taking is
mediated by changes in reward processing, we recognize that the distinction between risk
taking that is attributable to heightened arousal of the brain's reward system versus that
which is due to immaturity of the cognitive control system is somewhat artificial, since these
brain systems influence each other in a dynamic fashion. Consistent with this notion, in a
comparison of children, adolescents, and adults on a task that requires participants to either
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produce or inhibit a motor response to pictures of calm or happy faces, Somerville, Hare,
and Casey (2011) not only found elevated ventral striatal activity for adolescents in response
to happy faces, which the authors discuss as an “appetitive” cue, but also a corresponding
increase in failures to inhibit motor responses to the happy relative to the calm facial stimuli.
Thus, adolescents' exaggerated response to positively-valenced social cues is shown here to
directly undermine their capacity to inhibit approach behavior. Translated to the peer
context, this finding suggests that adolescents may not only be particularly sensitive to the
reward-sensitizing effects of social stimuli, but that this sensitization may further undermine
their capacity to “put the brakes on” impulsive responding.

Despite the promise of this conceptual model, further work is needed to specify the
neurodevelopmental dynamics underlying adolescent susceptibility to peer influence, and to

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translate this understanding to the design of effective prevention programs. In an effort to

“decompose” the peer effect, we are currently examining age differences in the influence of
social cues on neural activity underlying performance on tasks specifically tapping reward
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processing and response inhibition. In addition, we are investigating whether conditions

known to diminish cognitive control (e.g., alcohol intoxication) might exacerbate the
influence of peer context on risky decision making. Finally, as a first step toward our
ultimate goal of utilizing this research to improve the efficacy of risk-taking prevention
programs, we are examining whether targeted training designed to promote earlier
maturation of cognitive control skills might attenuate the influence of peers on adolescent
decision making.

Recommended Readings
Albert D, Steinberg L. A comprehensive presentation of the neurodevelopmental model of peer
influences on adolescent decision making. 2011 See References.
Burnett S, Sebastian C, Kadosh K, Blakemore. An up-to date review of the social neuroscience of
adolescence. 2011 See References.
Chein J, Albert D, O'Brien L, Uckert K, Steinberg L. An empirical report of peer influences on
adolescent risk taking and neural activity. 2011 See References.
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Falk EG, Way BM, Jasinska AJ. A recent review highlighting promising new directions for
neuroscientific research on social influence across the lifespan. 2012 See References.
Spear LP. A thorough and accessible textbook survey of neuroscientific research on adolescent
development. 2009 See References.

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Research in Child Development; Denver, CO. 2009 Apr.
Albert, D.; Steinberg, L. Peer influences on adolescent risk behavior. In: Bardo, MT.; Fishbein, DH.;
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Figure 1. The Stoplight driving game

In the Stoplight driving game, participants are instructed to attempt to reach the end of a
straight track as quickly as possible. At each of 20 intersections, participants render a
decision to either stop the vehicle (STOP) or to take a risk and run the traffic light (GO).
Stops result in a short delay. Successful risk taking results in no delay. Unsuccessful risk
taking results in a crash, and a relatively long delay. Summary indices of risk taking include
(a) the proportion of intersections in which the participant decides to run the light, and (b)
the total number of crashes.
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Figure 2. Differential susceptibility of adolescents to peer influences on Stoplight task

performance
Mean (a) percentage of risky decisions and (b) number of crashes for adolescent, young
adult, and adult participants when playing the Stoplight driving game either alone or with a
peer audience. Error bars indicate the standard error of the mean.
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Figure 3. Brain regions showing an age by social condition interaction during Stoplight task
performance
(a) Brain regions exhibiting an age by social condition interaction included the right ventral
striatum (VS, MNI peak coordinates: x = 9, y = 12, z = -8) and left orgitofrontal cortex
(OFC, MNI peak coordinates: x = -22, y = 47, z = -10). (b) Mean estimated BOLD signal
change (beta coefficient) from the four peak voxels of the VS and the OFC in adolescents
(adols.), young adults (YA), and adults under ALONE and PEER conditions. Error bars
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indicate standard errors of the mean. Brain images are shown by radiological convention
(left on right), and thresholded at p < .01 for presentation purposes.

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Figure 4. Behavioral and self-report correlates of Stoplight-related activity in the right ventral
striatum (VS)
Resistance to Peer Influence correlated with Stoplight-related activity in the right ventral
striatum (VS). Estimated activity was extracted from an average of the four peak voxels in
the VS region of interest. Scatterplot of activity in the VS indicating an inverse linear
correlation between self-reported resistance to peer influence (RPI) and the neural peer
effect (i.e., the difference in average VS activity in peer relative to alone conditions, or βpeer
− βalone).
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