https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732218801037 Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2019, Vol. 6(1) 56–63 © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2372732218801037 journals.sagepub.com/home/bbs Article Tweet An up-to-date review extends meta-analytic findings on age differences in risky decision-making in the lab: Overall, teens and children take equal risks—which has implications for policy. Key Points • Controlling for task characteristics, adolescents and children engage equally in risky decision-making, but this is not consistent with real-world findings. • However, when adolescents can decide to opt out of taking a risk, and choose a safe option instead, they choose the safe option more often than children do. • If and when children encounter the same risk expo- sure as adolescents in the real world, they may actu- ally end up engaging in more risk behavior than adolescents. • Early adolescents take more laboratory risks than mid-late adolescents, which is inconsistent with real- world surveys finding the opposite (older adolescents engage in more risk behavior); perhaps the real-world increase in risk-taking with age is partially due to increased risk exposure with age. • Finally, overall results showed that adolescents engaged in more risky decision-making than adults, and especially given an immediate consequence of the risk-taking. • These results could be relevant for policy makers involved in the juvenile justice system, particularly when deciding developmentally appropriate categori- zation of adolescents, for example, establishing at what age youth should be treated as adults. Introduction I wish that there were no age between ten and three and twenty or that youth would simply sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancestry, stealing and fighting. —Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, 1600 A.D. If we fast-forward to today, the same real-world risk behav- iors (e.g., delinquency) still show growth and/or peaks dur- ing adolescence. The adverse consequences of such risk behaviors on youth mental health, education, and career prospects can be severe. For instance, such heightened ado- lescent risk behavior could start a vicious cycle that by inter- rupting a youth’s education, subsequently limits adult career 801037BBS XX X 10.1177/2372732218801037Policy Insights From the Behavioral and Brain SciencesDefoe et al. research-article 2018 1 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA 2 Utrecht University, The Netherlands Corresponding Author: Ivy N. Defoe, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, 202 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Email: i.n.defoe@gmail.com Heightened Adolescent Risk-Taking? Insights From Lab Studies on Age Differences in Decision-Making Ivy N. Defoe 1 , Judith Semon Dubas 2 , and Daniel Romer 1 Abstract Surveys concur that adolescents disproportionately engage in many real-world risk behaviors, compared with children and adults. Recently researchers have employed laboratory risky decision-making tasks to replicate this apparent heightened adolescent risk-taking. This review builds on the main findings of the first meta-analysis of such age differences in risky decision- making in the laboratory. Overall, although adolescents engage in more risky decision-making than adults, adolescents engage in risky decision-making equal to children. However, adolescents take fewer risks than children on tasks that allow the option of opting out of taking a risk. To reconcile findings on age differences in risk-taking in the real-world versus the laboratory, an integrative framework merges theories on neuropsychological development with ecological models that emphasize the importance of risk exposure in explaining age differences in risk-taking. Policy insights and recent developments are discussed. Keywords risky decision-making, risk-taking, age differences, meta-analysis, adolescence, policy