A framework for interpreting the relationship between risk-taking and self-control in adolescence

Adolescence is often described as a phase marked by elevated risk-taking. Commonly held theories claim that these behaviors are caused by a developmental mismatch between reward-processing and cognitive control systems, as the later seems to fully mature only in early adulthood, making adolescents prone to self-control failures in the face of potential rewards. However, adolescents – much like adults – may engage in risky behaviors not only because of failures in self-control but also because of conscious and deliberate (even if objectively poor) decisions. In practice, it is not easy to distinguish between these two scenarios because when people fail in self-control they actually do things they want to do. In the case of adolescents, the problem is further complicated because we tend to judge their behaviors as failures of self-control based on adult standards about risky behavior. In this essay, we build on the philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s classical work on free will to provide a framework for determining when and why a given risky behavior stems from a failure of self-control. This framework enables the proposal of a set of clear and reasonable criteria that can be used in future research to clarify the relationship between adolescent risk-taking and self-control.