Collective Risk Taking in Adolescents and Young Adults: Adolescents Take More Risks When Deciding Collectively Than Alone

Introduction Adolescents show a heightened propensity to take risks, relative to other age groups, especially in contexts involving peers. In the current study, we investigated whether peer contexts and age interact to promote collective risk taking, that is, when groups of peers decide to take a risk together. We further investigated whether experiencing the outcomes of collective decisions affected participants' choice to face the same decision collectively or alone.Methods To investigate this, 248 United Kingdom-based participants between the ages of 11 and 39, tested in 2020-2021, took part in a collective risk taking task. In an alone condition, participants chose between two risky gambles by themselves. In a collective condition, participants voted for one of the two gambles alongside four anonymous online peers. After experiencing the outcomes of their decisions, participants then chose whether to face the same decision collectively or alone.Results When participants voluntarily joined collectives, they were more likely to take risks, compared with facing the same decisions alone. This risk-enhancing effect of collectives declined with age between late adolescence and early adulthood. In addition, after experiencing the outcomes of decisions made alone, adolescents were more likely to join collectives than were adults. Adolescents also displayed more decision variability than adults when facing risks alone, and this was associated with preferences to join collectives.Conclusions These findings suggest that adolescents are more likely than adults to take risks when deciding collectively, and more likely to voluntarily join those collectives.