A seven-year longitudinal study found that young people who experienced more unpredictable life events tended to have higher levels of activation in the fronto-parietal region of the brain during cognitive control tasks. As the brain matures, less effort should be required to complete these tasks, so this higher activation suggests that brain networks are becoming less efficient. This inefficiency, in turn, was associated with a reduced willingness to take active social risks (e.g., exploring new careers, voicing unpopular opinions, and starting conversations) in young adulthood. The paper is Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.
Positive social risks are situations in which a person takes opportunities in social life to produce positive outcomes or long-term benefits. These include actions such as starting a conversation, apologizing first, asking for help, offering assistance, admitting mistakes, and expressing honest feelings. These actions are “risks” because the other person may reject us, criticize us, misunderstand us, or not respond warmly to us. They are “positive” because they can lead to trust, friendship, cooperation, forgiveness, learning, and stronger relationships.
For example, inviting a new classmate to your group may be awkward, but it can make the person feel accepted. Telling the truth in a respectful manner can also be a positive social risk, as communication can improve, even if it feels difficult at first. Positive social risks are important because many valuable relationships and opportunities begin with someone having the courage to make the first move. It also helps people develop self-confidence, empathy and social skills. Without positive social risks, people not only avoid rejection, but also miss out on opportunities for connections, career advancement, and personal growth.
Study author Morgan Lindenmuth and colleagues investigated how unpredictable negative life events in childhood are associated with positive social risks in adolescence and early adulthood through changes in cognitive development. Research has shown that experiencing a chaotic environment during childhood can lead to “early” life strategies, increased aggression, and harmful risk-taking. The study’s authors hypothesized that unpredictable environments may reduce aggressive risk-taking by changing the way the decision-making centers of the developing brain are wired.
They conducted a longitudinal study that followed 167 adolescents from a southeastern state in the United States for seven years. Participating adolescents were 13 to 14 years old at the start of the study. Of those, 78% identified as white.
During the study, participants and their parents completed self-report questionnaires, and the teens completed behavioral and neuroimaging tasks once a year at the study authors’ university offices. Parents completed ratings of negative life events in their child’s life (using the Child and Youth Experience Survey) during the first 4 years of the study. To measure unpredictability, the researchers focused specifically on four events associated with instability: changes in cohabitation (someone moving in or out), parental unemployment, and changes in residence (moving).
At these annual check-ins, study participants also completed an assessment of cognitive control (multi-source interference task) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The task required participants to display three numbers and press a button to indicate which one was different, testing their ability to ignore distractions and focus. Once study participants reached young adulthood (18 to 21 years), they completed an assessment (Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale) measuring the likelihood of proactive social risk-taking.
The researchers used statistical modeling to track the adolescents’ brain development through fMRI scans over a four-year period. The results showed that fronto-parietal activation generally decreased as teenagers got older, reflecting that their brain networks had matured and become more efficient. However, young people who experienced more unpredictable life events during this period had higher levels of fronto-parietal activation by age 17, suggesting that their cognitive control processing was less efficient than other young people.
Second, when participants were between 18 and 21 years old, increased brain activation at age 17 was associated with a slightly lower active social risk-taking.
The study authors tested a statistical mediation model and proposed that unpredictability (reported by parents when participants were 14 to 17 years old) impeded the development of the brain’s cognitive control centers, leading to increased inefficient fronto-parietal activation at 17 years of age. This immature brain function, in turn, leads to a decreased willingness to take active social risks during young adulthood (ages 18 to 21). The results show a significant “indirect effect,” meaning this sequence of events is highly plausible.
“The findings have important implications for understanding the antecedents of risk-taking behavior by highlighting the role of neurocognitive functions in linking environmental unpredictability to positive social risk outcomes,” the study authors concluded.
This research contributes to scientific understanding of how childhood experiences physically change the brain and shape personality traits observed in adulthood. However, it should be noted that the observed associations were relatively weak and simple bivariate correlations do not indicate a direct, linear association between unpredictability in adolescence and active social risk-taking in young adulthood (this association only emerged when brain developmental data were considered).
The paper, “Environmental unpredictability predicts positive social risk through neurocognitive control,” was authored by Morgan Lindenmuth, Selina Mayer, Jacob Lee, Lawrence Steinberg, Brooks Casas, and Johnmean Kimspoon.
