Adolescents' and Young Adults' Online Risk Taking: The Role of Gist and Verbatim Representations

How Fuzzy-trace Theory Predicts Development of Risky Decision Making, with Novel Extensions to Culture and Reward Sensitivity

Comprehensive meta-analyses of risky decision making in children, adolescents, and adults have revealed that age trends in disambiguated laboratory tasks confirmed fuzzy-trace theory's prediction that preference for risk decreases monotonically from childhood to adulthood. These findings are contrary to predictions of dual systems or neurobiological imbalance models. Assumptions about increasing developmental reliance on mental representations of the gist of risky options are essential to account for this developmental trend. However, dual systems theory appropriately emphasizes how cultural context changes behavioral manifestation of risk preferences across age and neurobiological imbalance models appropriately emphasize developmental changes in reward sensitivity. All of the major theories include the assumption of increasing behavioral inhibition. Here, we integrate these theoretical constructs-representation, cultural context, reward sensitivity, and behavioral inhibition-to provide a novel framework for understanding and improving risky decision making in youth. We also discuss the roles of critical tests, scientific falsification, disambiguating assessments of psychological and neurological processes, and the misuse of such concepts as ecological validity and reverse inference. We illustrate these concepts by extending fuzzy-trace theory to explain why youth are a major conduit of viral infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19. We conclude by encouraging behavioral scientists to embrace new ways of thinking about risky decision making that go beyond traditional stereotypes about adolescents and that go beyond conceptualizing ideal decision making as trading off degrees of risk and reward.

Compliance with mass marketing solicitation: The role of verbatim and gist processing

INTRODUCTION

Mass marketing scams threaten financial and personal well-being. Grounded in fuzzy-trace theory, we examined whether verbatim and gist-based risk processing predicts susceptibility to scams and whether such processing can be altered.

METHODS

Seven hundred and one participants read a solicitation letter online and indicated willingness to call an "activation number" to claim an alleged $500,000 sweepstakes prize. Participants focused on the solicitation's verbatim details (hypothesized to increase risk-taking) or its broad gist (hypothesized to decrease risk-taking).

RESULTS

As expected, measures of verbatim-based processing positively predicted contact intentions, whereas measures of gist-based processing negatively predicted contact intentions. Contrary to hypotheses, experimental conditions did not influence intentions (43% across conditions). Contact intentions were associated with perceptions of low risk, high benefit, and the offer's apparent genuineness, as well as self-reported decision regret, subjective vulnerability to scams, and prior experience falling for scams.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, message perceptions and prior susceptibility, rather than experimental manipulations, mattered in predicting scam susceptibility.

Evaluating an Intervention to Reduce Risky Driving Behaviors: Taking the Fear Out of Virtual Reality

Educational programs are the most common type of intervention to reduce risky driving behavior. Their success, however, depends on the content of the material used and the mode of delivery. In the present study, we examined the impact of fear versus positively framed road safety films and traditional technologies (2D) versus emerging technologies (VR) on young drivers' self-reported risky driving behaviors. One hundred and forty-six university students completed a similar set of questionnaires pre-intervention and post-intervention, two weeks later. In addition, they were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions (VR vs. 2D; positive vs. negative). In the VR conditions, the film was presented using an HTC VIVE Virtual Reality headset. In the 2D conditions, the film was presented on a computer screen. Measures evaluating attitudes toward risky driving behavior were completed at both time frames, questions regarding the participants' emotional arousal were asked at pre-intervention as a manipulation check, and questions regarding willingness to take risks in potentially dangerous driving situations were asked at follow-up. The findings indicate that the positively framed films significantly decreased self-reported risky driving behaviors in both modalities, but especially when viewed in VR format. In contrast, the fear appeal film, when shown in VR, failed to reduce risky driving behaviors, and in fact, increased young drivers' self-reported risky driving behaviors. Theoretical frameworks regarding the strengths and weaknesses of fear appeals and positively framed appeals are discussed to aid future research to reduce risky driving. Practical implications on the future usage of VR are also considered.

Brain activation covaries with reported criminal behaviors when making risky choices: A fuzzy-trace theory approach

Criminal behavior has been associated with abnormal neural activity when people experience risks and rewards or exercise inhibition. However, neural substrates of mental representations that underlie criminal and noncriminal risk-taking in adulthood have received scant attention. We take a new approach, applying fuzzy-trace theory, to examine neural substrates of risk preferences and criminality. We extend ideas about gist (simple meaning) and verbatim (precise risk-reward tradeoffs) representations used to explain adolescent risk-taking to uncover neural correlates of developmentally inappropriate adult risk-taking. We tested predictions using a risky-choice framing task completed in the MRI scanner, and examined neural covariation with self-reported criminal and noncriminal risk-taking. As predicted, risk-taking was correlated with a behavioral pattern of risk preferences called "reverse framing" (preferring sure losses over a risky option and a risky option over sure gains, the opposite of typical framing biases) that has been linked to risky behavior in adolescents and is rarely observed in nondisordered adults. Experimental manipulations confirmed processing interpretations of typical framing (gist-based) and reverse-framing (verbatim-based) risk preferences. In the brain, covariation with criminal and noncriminal risk-taking was observed predominantly when subjects made reverse-framing choices. Noncriminal risk-taking behavior was associated with emotional reactivity (amygdala) and reward motivation (striatal) areas, whereas criminal behavior was associated with greater activation in temporal and parietal cortices, their junction, and insula. When subjects made more developmentally typical framing choices, reflecting nonpreferred gist processing, activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex covaried with criminal risk-taking, which may reflect cognitive effort to process gist while inhibiting preferred verbatim processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Cross-Cultural Study of Risky Online Self-Presentation

The use of social media is pervasive among young adults. However, not all posted content is beneficial to their self-presentation, but can have negative and damaging consequences. This study investigated how individual differences in self-monitoring and impulsiveness influence risky online self-presentation in British and Italian samples. British participants (n = 88) were more likely to post comments and images related to their alcohol and drug use, whereas Italian (n = 90) participants posted more offensive content and personal information. High self-monitoring and high impulsiveness was positively predictive of risky self-presentation online regardless of nationality, highlighting the normative influence of social media culture, and the influence of both spontaneous and deliberative behavior on posting inappropriate content online. These novel insights regarding the way young adults present themselves on social network sites could help explain differences in self-presentation.