"Young people OVERestimate risk, but do it anyway"

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by visceral_instinct, Aug 27, 2010.

  1. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/health/18brod.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&sq=teenager risk&st=nyt&scp=1

    Sounds about right.

    I remember being 14 and going for a walk with my mom and having this weird urge to mess around on the wall of a viaduct which was about 30/40ft high. I knew perfectly well just how dangerous it was, but I felt like I wouldn't be okay until I'd climbed on the viaduct wall and stood up and walked on it. The idea of danger had some weird, drug-like effect on me.

    Oh wait...I still do shit like that at 20

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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    It is a documented fact that most teenagers do not have a brain that has matured enough to give critical thought to what they are doing. In some people, like yourself, that never grow up!

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  5. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Hahaha.

    It's not lack of critical thought, though. More lack of impulse control. Such young people know rationally that they are doing something dangerous, but do it anyway.

    I have to say human beings in general aren't much good at impulse control

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    Look at the current obesity epidemic. Eat crap now, burn it off never.
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Young people, especially boys, think they're immortal.
     
  8. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    When I was in my teens and twenties, I too, thought I was bullet proof.

    However, most risk taking of the nature discussed, is carried out by young males. The reason is simple. To impress young females. At the end of the day, it is about status seeking, which in turn is about reproduction.

    The risk taking does not have to be in front of females. It is enough to gain status among fellow males. The females pick up on the higher status, and that guy becomes more attractive.

    At the end of the day, it is all about bonking.
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

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    I think it is about just status, and not so much about the male wanting or needing to impress any females.

    Apparently for kids these days, it is considered cool to get yourself on youtube doing something stupid and dangerous. It gives you status amongst your peers.

    For example, this is one of the latest status giving games that young people are posting on youtube:

    Now, the lack of oxygen to the brain gives a high or a rush to those being suffocated. However, this new game is seeing an increase in young people and children dying around the world. This particular game has been around for years and years, but it has taken on a new element and gained in popularity in recent years. And as the report states, the death toll continues to rise.

    So why do these kids try to suffocate each other or themselves and film it?

    It's about status and seeing that both male and female teenagers participate in such activities, one can't say it is to impress the opposite sex. It is to gain popularity and fame and status amongst one's peers.
     
  10. superstring01 Moderator

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    I'm sure you know this, but there's an obvious evolutionary purpose to it: Young men, up until 10k years ago, had to fight for mates. Short tempers and a sense of invincibility was required to complete that motivation. At 35, few men will actually go into battle for a female mate, but young men not only had the concupiscence, but the attitudes to back it up.

    We owe--at least half--of our current existence to the horniness and cocksure sense of invincibility of 15-20 year olds. The other half is owed to 15-20 year old stubborn and selective females who stood back and watched the boys kill eachother over access to their birth canals.

    Kinda' scary.

    ~String
     
  11. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    Correction to an error.

    Humans do not normally fight for a female mate. Anthropologists studying recent tribal hunter/gatherer societies find that the competition for status is fierce, but only rarely does it descend into open, or serious conflict (simple wrestling matches excepted).

    Females in those tribes are strongly attracted to males who are the best hunters, or the best leaders.

    Even today, young women are most attracted to high status males. Most young women will not make, as first choice, a guy who is reclusive - the class geek. Instead, they are attracted to males who are leaders - the high status guys.
     
  12. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    From the article in the OP (emphasis mine):

    The article goes on to give the following example:

    You are offered $1 million dollars if you survive a round of Russian roulette with a six-shooter (one loaded barrel, others empty). Do you do it?

    Many (most?) adults would say: No way. A one in six chance of death is too risky for that amount of money.

    And your average teenager? Maybe s/he thinks: It's only one in six chance of death. But if I survive I'll get a million bucks! Go for it!

    Interesting.
     
  13. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    The phenomenon is a little contrary, isn't it? A classical evolutionary explanation would be that younger males should avoid risk, to maximize their lifetime fitness; older males should fight, since in evolutionary terms (30-40) they're getting closer to senescence and death. Not sure what the evolutionary history of out species is WRT our 'usual', prior-to-technology death point- 20 yrs? 30?

    I guess it really does write off to impressing females. Minus the females, obviously, if you're putting it on Youtube. Our species doesn't seem too evolutionarily reactive. What, maybe 500 generations since we started some kind of agriculture? You'd think that ancestral sexual evolutionary trajectories would have altered somewhat in that time. Romans lived to something like 30. Maybe the window really just hasn't shifted until recently.
     
  14. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    What causes risk taking in females, though?

    Do males have a similar attraction to reckless females?

    Maybe they think a woman must be really high quality if she can take high risks, and is worth inseminating and pair-bonding with?

    Or was I just unusual, for a female, in being one of those "adrenaline before common sense" types?

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  15. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Good point about status Bells.

    Maybe it's about attention mostly. Getting As or being talented in something is hard. Choking yourself is easily done.
     
  16. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, the rash of asinine filmed behaviour on these sites actually almost certainly is related to that: females don't appear to engage in it in any appreciable numbers. Same old story, different setting.
     
  17. Bells Staff Member

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    What I think is a big catalyst nowdays is that these people put videos of their antics on youtube. It's not just choking yourself though. It is choking yourself and filming it and posting it so that you gain that status online has become important.

    I'll give you a perfect example. My cousin has a 15 year old daughter. She used to get straight A+ in all her subjects, was into sports and very talented musically as well (she played the violin). She was like the dream child until she hit high school. She now barely passes anything, stopped playing the violin, stopped playing sports, dresses like she's out on the prowl for sex.. And her parents let her do it and kep telling themselves that she was going through a phase.

    Then one day her aunt was flicking through facebook and saw she had a profile. She looked at it and there she was, with her full real name and photos of herself and her friends flashing their boobs... the profile wasn't marked private. In her facebook page, she also had links to youtube videos that she and her friends had uploaded doing stupid stuff - such as drinking and then filming themselves driving, etc. Her aunt immediately told her father and she has now been banned from using the internet without direct supervision, no more facebook, mobile phone taken from her, etc..

    We kept asking ourselves, why would she have done it? What would have prompted her to do stuff like that? And when her parents asked her, her response was simple. It's what everyone else is doing. This is apparently what her teenage years is about. Doing stupid things and posting it online and that is considered cool.. She did not understand the real dangers to herself or to her friends. As she said, what are the chances that a paedophile would have stumbled onto her facebook page or the videos on youtube. All I could say to her was 'what are the chances that they have not already?' and reminded her that she was stupid enough to not post such stuff but also used her real full name in her profile. It took a while for the actual dangers of what she had done to sink into her thick skull and understand that she had put herself in quite a bit of danger, and all because that's what all kids are doing and because of the cool/status factor.

    This girl was talented and she gave all that away to become an online teenage tool. And all for status.
     
  18. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    Totally.
    A lot of guys will only be attracted to girls with a massive amount of 'go' factor.
    Why not have fun?
     
  19. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose teenagers suffer from poor risk evaluation compared to adults. Maybe the problem is the perception of gain? An adult has a greater chance to have offspring, a house, a car, and other material elements of wealth. A teenager has acne, a laptop and probably a dime bag of weed. Without established gains, maybe risk-taking behaviour is higher: one could establish substantial resources rapidly in this scenario, producing reproductive advantage.
     
  20. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    I'm pretty sure not all teenage risk taking behaviour is about mate attracting though.

    Most of it is about getting an instant rush.
     
  21. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    I've noticed as I've got older that taking a good risk is quite therapeutic.
    I Just tend to way up the options a bit quicker and make more informed choices of risk.
    The end result may still be the same (you know, like you die) but the odds are usually better.
     
  22. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah that's sad and crazy stupid but that kind of behaviour is sadly common, though not to that extreme. Social status is so important to human beings, even if that social status entails being a huge tool. I couldn't tell you why.

    In some ways I think having ASD traits was maybe a good thing. It saved me from becoming one of those teenage tools, I think. Being so asocial, I didn't care about status. Being sexy, popular or cool didn't matter to me. That was an alien world where other girls went, not me.
     
  23. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    For me I think it was (and still is) that dangerous situations seemed more 'real' than everyday life. I wanted to feel alive, not just exist. I wanted something more than just eating, breathing, and getting mundane jobs done.

    I still do, although a few crashes/mess ups later, I tend to pick my instant rushes a bit more carefully

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