Sustained Reductions in Children's Risk Taking from Peer-Communicated Behavioral Safety Norms

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 622-632
Author(s):  
Barbara A Morrongiello ◽  
Emily Weinberger ◽  
Mackenzie Seasons

Abstract Objective This research examined whether the positive effects of a peer-communicated social norm that reduces risk-taking behaviors persist over time and if a reminder of this peer-communicated safety message has any impact on this outcome. Methods Positive mood in 7- to 9-year olds was induced experimentally and risk taking intentions and behaviors were measured when the child was in a positive and neutral mood state and after they had been exposed to either a safety or neutral peer-communicated social norm message. A few weeks later, half of the participants who experienced the safety social norm message were exposed to a reminder of this message via a slogan and risk-taking measures were taken again when in a heightened positive mood state. Results Exposure to a safety norm successfully counteracted the increase in risk taking associated with a positive mood state. These effects persisted for several weeks regardless of whether the children were exposed to a reminder. Conclusion Manipulating peer social norms holds promise as an approach to produce reductions in children’s risk taking and these effects persist at least over several weeks.

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 406-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Morrongiello ◽  
Julia Stewart ◽  
Kristina Pope ◽  
Ekaterina Pogrebtsova ◽  
Karissa-June Boulay

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 777-777
Author(s):  
ROBERT J. HAGGERTY ◽  
MICHAEL I. COHEN

The Office of Technology Assessment has a deserved reputation for issuing high-quality, if hard-nosed and critical reports. Pediatricians reacted somewhat skeptically to their earlier report on child health,1 which stated that there was little evidence for the efficacy of the number of health supervision visits that are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. We urge you not to let that report scare you off from a new report on adolescents.2 It is very comprehensive, and should go far to put adolescents on the national agenda. It is passionate, yet based on careful analysis of data. It documents the increase in risk-taking behaviors, with a concomitant decrease in healthy life-styles, among many adolescents over the past two decades.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M. von Ranson ◽  
Susan L. Rosenthal

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Dou ◽  
Ming-Chen Zhang ◽  
Yue Liang

The association between future time perspective and risk-taking behaviors has received extensive empirical attention. However, the underlying mechanism that links future negative time perspective to risk-taking behaviors are complex and not well-understood. To address this gap, we adopted a longitudinal design examined the association between FNTP and risk-taking behaviors, and the roles of coping styles and self-control in this association among Chinese adolescents (total N = 581, 46.3% females). Results showed that FNTP at wave 1 predicted risk-taking behavior at wave 3 via positive and negative coping styles at wave 2. Furthermore, adolescents with low self-control and used negative coping strategies prefer to engage in risk-taking behaviors as compared to their high self-control counterparts. Taken together, these research findings underscore the importance of considering influence of the future negative time perspective on adolescents’ risk-taking behaviors, and provided important implications for developing the preventions and interventions for reducing adolescents’ risk-taking behaviors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162095983
Author(s):  
Kennon M. Sheldon ◽  
Mike Corcoran ◽  
Melanie Sheldon

Chronic positive mood (CPM) has been shown to confer a wide variety of social, functional, and health benefits. Some researchers have argued that humans evolved to feel CPM, which explains why most people report better than neutral mood (the “positivity offset bias”) and why particularly happy people have particularly good outcomes. Here, we argue that the Duchenne smile evolved as an honest signal of high levels of CPM, alerting others to the psychological fitness of the smiler. Duchenne smiles are honest because they express felt positive emotion, making it difficult for unhappy people to produce them. Duchenne smiles enable happy people to signal and cooperate with one another, boosting their advantages. In our literature review, we found (a) that not all Duchenne smiles are “honest,” although producing them in the absence of positive emotion is difficult and often detectable, and (b) that the ability to produce and recognize Duchenne smiles may vary somewhat by a person’s cultural origin. In the final section of the article, we consider behavioral influences on CPM, reviewing research showing that engaging in eudaimonic activity reliably produces CPM, as posited by the eudaimonic-activity model. This research suggests that frequent Duchenne smiling may ultimately signal eudaimonic personality as well as CPM.


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