Adolescent Risk-Taking: The Validity of Stoplight as a Laboratory-Based Measure

Abstract

Adolescence is a developmental period characterised by an increase in behaviours such as drinking, smoking, drug taking, dangerous driving, and unprotected sex. These risk-taking behaviours can lead to serious psychological and physical consequences. Laboratory-based analogues of risk-taking behaviour provide an opportunity to assess risk-taking in a controlled context. The goal of the present study was to assess the validity of the recently-revised Chicken game, Stoplight, as a laboratory-based measure of risk-taking. To do this, we examined the relations between Stoplight, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), personality, and previous real-life risk-taking behaviour, in a sample of adolescents (aged 16- to 17-years old) and emerging adults (aged 18- to 20 years-old). Our results showed that, after age and sex, personality was the largest predictor of real-life risk-taking behaviour. Personality correlated with prosocial and antisocial risk-taking behaviour, but prosocial and antisocial risk-taking behaviour did not correlate with each other. This result suggests that prosocial risk-taking is an alternative outlet to antisocial risk-taking for individuals with high risk-seeking personalities. Risky game-play on Stoplight was associated with real-life antisocial risk-taking behaviour, but this association was no longer significant once age, sex, and personality were taken into account. BART performance was correlated with prosocial risk-taking behaviour but this association was no longer significant once sex and personality were taken into account. The results of this study have implications for measuring risk-taking behaviour in the laboratory, and for current public policies surrounding risk-taking behaviours in young people in New Zealand.