Unpredictable childhoods may hinder a young adult’s ability to take positive risks

A 7-year longitudinal study found that adolescents who experienced more unpredictable life events tend to show higher levels of activation in the frontoparietal region of the brain during a cognitive control task. Because a maturing brain should require less effort to complete these tasks, this higher activation suggests a less efficient brain network. In turn, this inefficiency was associated with a lower willingness to take positive social risks (e.g., exploring a new career, voicing an unpopular opinion, starting a conversation) in young adulthood. The paper was published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Positive social risks are situations in which a person takes a chance in social life in order to create a positive outcome or long-term benefit. They include actions such as starting a conversation, apologizing first, asking for help, offering help, admitting a mistake, or expressing honest feelings. These actions are “risks” because the other person may reject us, criticize us, misunderstand us, or fail to respond warmly. They are “positive” because they can lead to trust, friendship, cooperation, forgiveness, learning, and stronger relationships.

For example, inviting a new classmate to join a group may feel uncomfortable, but it can help that person feel accepted. Telling the truth respectfully can also be a positive social risk because it may improve communication even if it feels difficult at first. Positive social risks are important because many valuable relationships and opportunities begin with someone being brave enough to act first. They also help people develop confidence, empathy, and social skills. Without positive social risks, people avoid rejection but also miss chances for connection, career advancement, and personal growth.

Study author Morgan Lindenmuth and his colleagues explored how unpredictable negative life events in childhood may be associated with positive social risk taking in adolescence and early adulthood through changes in cognitive development. Studies indicate that experiencing a chaotic environment in childhood is associated with a “fast” life strategy, leading to higher aggression and harmful risk-taking. The authors of this study hypothesized that an unpredictable environment may also reduce positive risk taking by altering how the developing brain wires its decision-making centers.

They conducted a longitudinal study that followed 167 adolescents from a southeastern state in the United States for 7 years. Participating adolescents were 13-14 years old at the start of the study. 78% of them identified as White.

During the study period, participants and their parents completed self-report questionnaires, and the teens completed behavioral and neuroimaging tasks once a year at the university offices of the study authors. Parents completed an assessment of negative life events in their children’s lives during the first 4 years of the study (using the Child and Adolescent Survey of Experiences). To measure “unpredictability,” the researchers specifically focused on four events related to instability: changes in cohabitation (someone moving in or out), parental job loss, and changes in residence (moving).

At these annual check-ins, study participants also completed an assessment of cognitive control (the Multi-Source Interference Task) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The task required them to view three digits and press a button to indicate which one was different, testing their ability to ignore distractions and focus. When the study participants reached young adulthood (between 18 and 21 years old), they completed an assessment measuring their likelihood of engaging in positive social risk taking (the Domain Specific Risk-Taking Scale).

The researchers used statistical modeling to track the adolescents’ brain development over the four years of fMRI scans. The results showed that, generally, frontoparietal activation decreased as the teens got older, reflecting a maturing, more efficient brain network. However, adolescents who experienced more unpredictable life events during this period had higher levels of frontoparietal activation by age 17, suggesting their cognitive control processing was less efficient than their peers.

In turn, this higher brain activation at age 17 was associated with slightly lower positive social risk taking when participants were between 18 and 21 years old.

The study authors tested a statistical mediation model proposing that unpredictability (as reported by parents when participants were 14-17 years old) hinders the development of the brain’s cognitive control centers, leading to increased, inefficient activation in the frontoparietal region at age 17. In turn, this less mature brain functioning leads to a lower willingness to take positive social risks in young adulthood (18-21 years of age). The results showed a significant “indirect effect,” meaning this chain of events is highly plausible.

“The findings have important implications for understanding the antecedents of risk-taking behaviors by highlighting the role of neurocognitive functioning in linking environmental unpredictability to positive social risk outcomes,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of how childhood experiences physically alter the brain and shape personality characteristics observed in adulthood. However, it should be noted that the observed associations were relatively weak, and simple bivariate correlations did not indicate a direct, straight-line association between unpredictability in adolescence and positive social risk taking in young adulthood (the connection only appeared when factoring in the brain development data).

The paper, “Environmental Unpredictability Predicts Positive Social Risk Taking through Neural Cognitive Control,” was authored by Morgan Lindenmuth, Celina Meyer, Jacob Lee, Laurence Steinberg, Brooks Casas, and Jungmeen Kim-Spoon.