Risk Taking Attitude: Relations with Executive Functions and Sensation Seeking among a Section of Egyptian Adolescents

Abstract

Objectives: Adolescence is an uncertain period of one's life. Even with perfect health, there is still a 2–3 times higher danger of injury or sudden demise during adolescence than in childhood. The major factors behind this increased disease and death are more risky behaviors of adolescents, i.e., driving, smoking, drinking, unprotected sexual encounters and drug consumption. Generally, adolescents have been seen to take big risks than others. One likely reason for people's differences lies in their mental capabilities, such as self-monitoring, judgment, planning and impulse control. Evidence has shown that teenagers, owing to less efficiency and integration of the brain system in the prefrontal cortex mainly, may lead to such risky behaviors. This study is also about evaluating the association of sensation performance and seeking as well as risky behavior on tests of the brain (executive) function.

Methods: A total of 250 adolescents (103 males, 147 females) 13 to 17 years of age (mean age 15.36 years, SD1.06 years) were recruited from secondary schools in two Egyptian cities: Tanta and Aswan. A validated Arabic version of the executive functions (BRIEF) and an Arabic-translated and validated version of Arnett's Sensation Seeking Inventory (AISS, Arnett, 1994) were applied to evaluate the sample. Risk-taking attitude was measured using Risk Orientation Questionnaire (Rohrmann, 1997)

Results: Both sensation seeking and executive functions are significantly associated with risk-taking attitudes. Intensity, MCI, BRI, and novelty are all significantly predicted risk-taking attitudes in this order. Finally, a comparison between males and females adolescents revealed a significant difference in favor of males in sensation seeking and risk-taking attitudes, whereas executive functions showed statistically significant differences favouring females.

Conclusions: Our results point to the crucial part that executive control plays in adolescents' risk-taking behaviour.