Psychological determinants of risk taking by children: An integrative model and implications for interventions

Abstract

To draw on empirical findings of the psychological factors that cause elementary-school children to engage in risky play behaviors that can lead to injury, with the aim of developing an integrative model that can support intervention-program planning.
An extensive review of literature on this topic was conducted, determinants of risk taking for which there was empirical support were identified, and results were synthesized to create an integrative model of children's risk taking.
Research on risk taking in children is limited, but the findings support the importance of examining child, family and socio-environmental factors to understand children's risk-taking behaviors.
Development of a model outlining the determinants of risk behaviors can provide a foundation for initiatives that aim to reduce such behaviors and prevent childhood injuries.

Full text

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Psychological determinants of risk taking by children: an
integrative model and implications for interventions
Barbara A Morrongiello, Jennifer Lasenby-Lessard
...................................................................................................................................
See end of article for
authors’ affiliations
........................
Correspondence to:
Dr B A Morrongiello,
Psychology Department,
University of Guelph,
Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1,
Canada; bmorrong@
uoguelph.ca
Accepted 6 November 2006
........................
Injury Prevention 2007;13:20–25. doi: 10.1136/ip.2005.011296
Objectives: To draw on empirical findings of the psychological factors that cause elementary-school children
to engage in risky play behaviors that can lead to injury, with the aim of developing an integrative model that
can support intervention-program planning.
Methods: An extensive review of literature on this topic was conducted, determinants of risk taking for which
there was empirical support were identified, and results were synthesized to create an integrative model of
children’s risk taking.
Results: Research on risk taking in children is limited, but the findings support the importance of examining
child, family and socio-environmental factors to understand children’s risk-taking behaviors.
Conclusions: Development of a model outlining the determinants of risk behaviors can provide a foundation
for initiatives that aim to reduce such behaviors and prevent childhood injuries.
U
nintentional injuries are a leading cause of death and
hospitalization during childhood.
12
Research examining
the determinants of risk taking shows the multi-
determined nature of injury-risk behaviors. The present report
introduces an integrative model based on these research
findings, and discusses implications for interventions that seek
to reduce physical risk-taking behaviors in children 6–12 years
of age. To develop the model, we reviewed published research
and selected for discussion empirically supported determinants
of risk taking in children, giving particular attention to factors
amenable to intervention.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Journal articles written in English reporting studies of children
6–12 years of age and published from 1990 to 2005 were
identified in MEDLINE, ERIC and PSYCLIT databases; refer-
ence lists of retrieved publications also were subsequently
reviewed. Search terms included child*and youth crossed with
each of the following terms: risk tak*, injury risk behav*, risk*
beh*, risk compensation, sensation seeking and injur* risk;
note: the asterisk allows retrieval of articles containing any
variation of the word stem (eg, risk tak* = risk take, risk taking
and risk taker). Abstracts and titles were reviewed by the
authors and, after discussion (which sometimes involved
reviewing the entire article), reports of empirical studies agreed
upon were retrieved and reviewed. Findings were synthesized
to identify unique determinants of risk taking and to develop
the model reported. Illustrative studies were selected for
citation (ie, the most extensive study and/or recent publication)
to support the model; however, no formal criteria were used to
assess the quality of the research reported.
MODEL OF THE DETERMINANTS OF CHILDREN’S RISK
TAKING
Numerous models explain risk taking during adolescence
3–6
;
however, most are based on research investigating delinquency
or risk behaviors that would not routinely apply to children of
elementary age (eg, illicit drug use, alcohol consumption and
unprotected sex). No such models have been developed to
explain physical risk taking among elementary-school children
(6–12 years of age). The accumulation of evidence during the
past several years, however, now provides a foundation for the
development of such a model. As shown in fig 1, children’s risk
taking is a multi-determined outcome, with child, parent and
social-situational factors all influencing this behavior.
In the following sections, research from each of these
domains of influence is reviewed, and implications of these
findings for intervention programming are discussed. We
acknowledge that some degree of risk taking is necessary for
development, adaptive functioning and/or survival. The litera-
ture reviewed is concerned with understanding poor decision
making about risk taking that increases the risk of injury.
Moreover, although epidemiological data show that macro-
level factors extending beyond the individual and family (eg,
socioeconomics, culture and neighborhoods) also affect injury
rates,
8–12
these factors are not discussed in detail because the
focus of this paper is limited to factors that are amenable to
Figure 1 Empirically supported determinants of children’s risk decisions.
20
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intervention programming. However, we certainly acknowledge
that macro-level factors can influence children’s injuries and
may affect the overall effectiveness of intervention programs.
Therefore, it may be important to consider these factors when
designing and evaluating such programs.
CHILD FACTORS
Children make many risk-taking decisions when they are
unsupervised. It is important to understand how individual
characteristics influence these decisions.
Age
There are surprisingly few studies on the developmental aspects
of risk taking in children between 6 and 12 years of age. It has
been shown that hazard identification improves with age,
11
that
older children are more optimistic than younger ones that
injury will not occur,
12
and that older children are more likely
than younger ones to accept responsibility for resulting
injuries.
12
However, older children have not been shown
necessarily to engage in greater risk taking than younger
ones.
12
Thus, what seems to matter more in predicting risk
taking or avoidance are individual child attributes (eg,
cognitions, temperament—see below), rather than age itself.
Sex
Sex has been shown to have a strong influence on children’s
tendency to take risks, and on their injury rates. Consistent
with epidemiological evidence that boys experience more
frequent injuries than girls, laboratory research and studies in
real-life situations show that boys engage in greater risk taking
than girls.
1 2 12–14
Moreover, sex is an attribute that influences
how many other factors operate to affect risk taking by
children. Thus, sex is one of the few factors for which
interactive effects have been systematically studied. As will
become evident in the remainder of this report, although boys
and girls both sometimes take significant physical risks, they
often have different motivations and thoughts about risk
taking. Because of this, intervention programs that aim to
change these underlying factors to reduce risk taking may need
to be designed differently for boys and girls in order to be
effective.
Cognitions
Consistent with numerous psychological models of health
behaviors (eg, Health Beliefs Model
15
; Theory of Planned
Behavior
16
), children who appraise danger as low, judge their
personal vulnerability for injury to be low, and believe that the
potential severity of injury is not great, are more likely to take
risks.
12 17–19
Interestingly, because of the attributions children
make for injury outcomes, experiencing injuries does not
necessarily alter these cognitions or lead to risk avoidance. In
fact, children who attribute an injury outcome to bad luck,
rather than their own behaviors, are very likely to repeatedly
engage in the same behavior that led to an initial injury.
17
This
finding, coupled with the fact that parents assume that children
do learn risk avoidance from injury experiences,
20 21
may help to
explain why experiencing a medically attended injury does not
reduce the likelihood of children experiencing another such
injury, but actually predicts future injury.
22–29
Differences in injury-relevant cognitions also help to explain
why boys engage in greater risk taking than girls. Girls think in
terms of ‘‘Can I get hurt’’, whereas boys think in terms of ‘‘How
hurt might I get’’.
11
Boys are also more likely than girls to
erroneously attribute injuries to bad luck when their own
behavior is often responsible.
17
Therefore, interventions that can
effect changes in these cognitions could be successful in
evoking reductions in risk behaviors. Such interventions have
been developed for adults and adolescents.
30–32
There are also
recent reports of successfully changing cognitions among
elementary-school children.
33–35
Emotions
Children’s emotional responses in risk situations influence how
they behave, and differ for boys and girls. Specifically,
anticipation of positive feelings of fun and excitement leads
to increased risk taking, whereas anticipation of fear leads to
risk avoidance.
34
Boys are more likely than girls to report
experiencing fun and excitement in risk situations, which
explains their greater readiness to engage in risk behaviors.
18 33
These few studies are the first to document that risk
decisions in children are driven not only by what they think
(ie, rational processes) but also by what they feel or expect to
feel when taking risks (ie, irrational processes). In fact, recent
evidence shows that emotional predictors of risk decisions are
statistically significant even after controlling for cognitive
influences on risk taking.
33
Thus, interventionists now have
two domains by which they may effect changes in children’s
risk taking: cognitions and emotions.
Experience
The more experience a child has with an activity, the greater
tolerance for risk taking the child shows for that activity. The
basis for this increased risk taking is a personal belief that they
can successfully manage the increased risk.
36
Grouping by age
and mixing children who have low experience with those who
have high experience (eg, in schoolyards, on playgrounds, on
sports teams and at camps), therefore, may increase the risk for
children with low experience because of the exposure to
modeling of high-risk behaviors by children with greater
experience (see the section Social-situational factors).
Motivations
Motivations for why children decide to engage in risk taking or
risk avoidance vary with sex. Boys’ reasons for their risk
decisions show that they consider fun and convenience, and
often have overinflated beliefs about how effectively they can
manage the risk. By contrast, girls focus more on safety
concerns in deciding how to behave, which leads to greater risk
avoidance.
36
Interventions that target boys, therefore, may need
to deal with more issues than just safety awareness.
Temperament/personality
Children who are high in impulsiveness and activity levels
engage in greater risk taking and experience more injuries,
37–39
although these children show no deficits in knowledge of safety
or injury prevention.
40
Children high in sensation seeking (ie,
daring, novelty and thrill-seeking behaviors),
37 41
who are
oppositional (ie, non-compliant and difficult for parents to
manage)
42
or who overestimate their physical abilities
43 44
also
show greater risk taking. Sensation seeking also has been
shown to lead to increased risk compensation when wearing
safety gear, which means that wearing safety gear is particu-
larly likely to lead to greater risk taking than when not wearing
the gear among high sensation seekers.
44
By contrast, children
high in inhibitory control (ie, capacity to inhibit inappropriate
behaviors) engage in less risk taking and experience fewer
injuries than children low on this trait.
45
Although interventions may be unlikely to effect changes in
these disposition-based behaviors, identifying these children
with high injury risk may prove useful for targeting increased
supervision to ensure the safety of children with these
behavioral attributes. In addition, recent intervention research
suggests that tailoring interventions with some of these child
attributes in mind can greatly increase effectiveness.
46–49
Thus,
Children’s risk taking 21
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screening to identify high sensation seekers
41
would allow one
to direct interventions to children most likely to show risk
taking.
33 35
FAMILY AND PARENT FACTORS
Through socialization, explicit teaching, and modeling prac-
tices, families exert a strong influence on the behaviors of their
members. Surprisingly, although there is a plethora of research
showing family influences on adolescent health risk behaviors
(smoking,
50
drinking,
51
fat intake
52
and seat belt usage
53
),
studies assessing these effects on children’s risk taking are
much less systematic and limited in number.
Socialization
Research on socialization practices shows that both mothers
and fathers respond similarly to each other, but differently to
the risk behaviors of sons and daughters. Sons receive explicit
encouragement for risk taking, whereas daughters receive
cautions about risk taking and about their vulnerability for
injury. These socialization differences are evident as early as
2 years of age and persist through at least 8 years of age.
54 55
Moreover, even when children show exactly the same risk
behaviors with the same degree of competence, mothers
intervene more frequently and quickly to stop risk behaviors
by daughters than sons.
55
Mothers are also more likely to
interpret behaviors that could lead to injury in terms of safety
for daughters, but in terms of discipline for sons.
21
Reports by children indicate awareness of parent expecta-
tions about what would constitute acceptable risk taking,
although sons and daughters respond differently to this
knowledge. Daughters are more likely to comply with how
they believe their parents would like them to behave, whereas
sons are more likely to engage in greater risk taking than their
parents would prefer.
36
Girls are also more likely than boys to
tell their parents about minor injuries and near-injury events,
which would provide even further opportunity for parental
intervention in risk avoidance for girls.
17
Interventions that
target increasing children’s awareness of parental or adult
norms for how they should behave, therefore, may influence
girls’ risk decisions, but are unlikely to have much effect on
boys’ risk decisions.
Parents’ behaviors
Although parents’ teaching has been found to be the best
predictor of children’s current safety practices, parents’
practices have been found to be the best predictor of how
children intend to behave once they reach adulthood.
56
Essentially, when parents model risk behavior while demand-
ing safety practices from their children, they are effectively
teaching children to believe that ‘‘safety is for kids’’. The fact
that parents’ modeling of risk behaviors can potentially have a
long-term effect on their child’s risk practices suggests that
interventions to reduce risk of injury in multi-generational
work contexts (eg, agricultural worksites) may have to target
the behaviors of senior and junior family members (eg, father
and sons) to evoke reductions in risk practices.
Siblings
Older same-sex siblings also have been shown to influence the
risk decisions of younger ones. Whether their intention is to
promote greater risk taking or risk avoidance, older siblings are
quite effective in knowing what to say to alter the decisions of
their younger siblings.
57
Moreover, younger siblings are
particularly susceptible to the influence of their older sibling
when they rate the quality of the relationship very positively.
Older siblings who were boys most often focused on the value
of having fun when trying to influence their younger brother.
By contrast, older female siblings most often focused on safety-
related issues.
57
In addition, the greater the number of
persuasive arguments made, the greater the success in
convincing the younger sibling to change their risk decision.
57
Thus, persistence by the persuader pays off, evoking change in
the behavior of the persuadee.
Interventions that wish to reduce risk behaviors in children
of school age, therefore, may improve their chances of success
by having an older sibling communicate about risk avoidance,
rather than an adult or age-mate peer with whom the target
child has no or a limited personal relationship. The importance
of the target child respecting and valuing the opinion of the
messenger is clearly evident in these findings. Thus, if one can
identify famous figures (eg, sports stars and popular musicians)
who children respect and whose opinion they value, recruiting
these individuals to encourage children to engage in safety
practices may prove successful to promote these practices.
SOCIAL-SITUATIONAL FACTORS
Social-situational factors that influence children’s risk taking
can be quite extensive and diverse. However, we have limited
our focus to those for which there is empirical support.
Peers
Many have said that elementary-school children are at greatest
risk for injury when they are with peers.
58 59
Indeed, even by
6 years of age children are aware that boys and girls differ in
risk taking, and they show different expectations for peer risk
taking depending on sex of the peer.
60
Oral persuasion skills are
well developed by 8 years of age
61
; hence, elementary-school
children can be considerably influenced by their friends’
endorsements to participate in high-risk activities.
36 57 62–64
Children also select best friends who are highly similar to
themselves in their level of tolerance for risk taking, and they
know this about one another.
36
These friendship choices may
reinforce and further contribute to children’s already existing
tendencies (due to individual characteristics and/or family and
parent factors as outlined previously) to take physical risks.
These findings highlight the potential benefits of targeting
dyads or groups of friends, instead of individuals, in interven-
tions that seek to reduce children’s risk behaviors. Intervention
programs that aim to instill feelings of shared responsibility for
each other’s safety may prove particularly successful. Programs
for adolescents (eg, drunk driving) have shown some success
when they target peer groups and emphasize shared responsi-
bility. Similar approaches could prove to be useful for reducing
younger children’s risk taking. Programs that draw on peers to
communicate persuasive messages about risk avoidance,
particularly messages delivered by close friends, also may prove
particularly successful in evoking reductions in risk behaviors.
However, tailoring programs based on sex of the target
audience may be necessary to achieve success.
60
Children’s risk decisions are also influenced by non-oral
(observational) information, which allows for peer influences
among children who do not even know one another. It has been
shown that if the risk taker displays a facial expression that
communicates confidence (eg, smiling), then children rate the
behavior as low in injury risk, whereas displaying a fearful
facial expression leads to greater perception of injury risk.
12
Moreover, girls assign more significance to this wary facial
expression than boys, leading to greater risk avoidance by girls
than boys.
These findings indicate that increased perceptions of risk
may suffice to deter imitative risk taking by girls but not by
boys. Exposing boys to information that more strongly
communicates fear and/or potential consequences of risk taking
(eg, injury experiences of age mates) may be necessary to have
22 Morrongiello, Lasenby-Lessard
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increased perceptions of risk translate into reduced risk taking;
in fact, results of a recent intervention study provide support for
this premise.
66
Recent evidence also indicates that the mere presence of an
observing unknown peer can lead both boys and girls to make
riskier choices.
35
Thus, although the quality of the relationship
seems to be important for oral persuasion towards more risky
choices,
36
it does not seem to be as important for non-oral
(observational) influences. The literature on psychological
interventions contains programs aimed at developing resistance
skills in order to ‘‘inoculate’’ against future, somewhat
unpredictable, social situations that might lead one to consider
increased risk taking. Drawing on theories of psychological
immunization,
67
the aim is to build self-awareness about
feelings or thoughts that are likely to occur in social situations
pressuring for increased risk taking, and to teach children to
use these emotions or thoughts to evoke strategies they have
learned (eg, self talk messages) to resist such pressure favoring
risk taking. This inoculation approach has been shown to
reduce health risk behaviors (eg, drug use, smoking and alcohol
consumption) among adolescents.
68–70
It may also prove useful
to enhance resistance to situational pressures for risk taking
among elementary-school children.
Media
Media exposure also has been shown to influence children’s
behavior, particularly via television viewing. Content analyses
of children’s television programs show that the frequency of
injury-risk behaviors by characters far exceeds modeling of
safety behaviors, and most of the risk behaviors portrayed do
not result in any injuries that have substantive negative or
sustained consequences for the victim.
71–73
Research examining
the effect of television on children’s behavior shows that
exposure to programs that portray high risk taking results in
greater physical risk taking in hypothetical situations.
74
Similarly, exposing school-age children to an educational safety
video reduces their willingness to take risks, and increases their
awareness of hazards in common situations.
75
The implications of these findings for interventions are clear:
safety education television programming may be effective in
reducing childhood risk taking and raising awareness of
hazards. Policy-based interventions to mandate reductions in
the modeling of risk taking in children’s programming seem
likely to have an effect by reducing real-life risk behaviors.
Immediate contextual demands
Finally, children have also been shown to shift to increased risk
taking when the immediate demands of the social situation favor
these behaviors. Adults tend to perform behaviors that are
convenient, even though these behaviors may increase the
likelihood of injury to themselves or to their children.
20
Recent
evidence with children showed the same effect.
33
When presented
different possible paths of travel that pitted distance against safety
(eg, the most convenient and fastest route was the riskiest one,
the least convenient and slowest route was the safest), most
children endorsed taking a more risky (convenient) route than
was originally planned, and cited ‘‘convenience’’ as the reason for
increasing their level of risk taking. This shift to greater risk taking
was significantly greater for boys than for girls. Children justified
their endorsement of a riskier path by changing their cognitive
and emotional appraisals of risk to support their new riskier
choice.
33
Intervention programs need to make children aware of
these situational determinants of risk taking, and attempt to
promote children’s resistance to such immediate situational
pressures. Using the types of inoculation intervention approaches
outlined earlier may help achieve this aim.
GENERAL IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION
One of the greatest challenges to injury prevention is the variety
of ways in which injuries result and, consequently, the
potential range of intervention strategies. On the basis of the
research findings reviewed, targeting micro-level factors is
essential for interventions that aim to curtail injuries by
reducing risk taking during the elementary years. Specifically,
the research points to a number of potential targets for
intervention (ie, what the intervention aims to alter), including
children’s attitudes, beliefs, cognitions and emotions. Although
these targets may be more familiar to psychologists than to
public health professionals, extensive research with adults and
adolescents provides insights into how to evoke changes in
these factors at the individual level.
30–32 76–78
These findings can
provide foundational knowledge on how to develop interven-
tion programs to target these key determinants of children’s
risk taking. Of course, how one intervenes and the tactics used
to disseminate the intervention are likely to achieve most
success by also considering more macro-level factors, such as
neighborhood attributes
79
(eg, neighborhood friends commu-
nicating norms about risk taking, resources available to support
safe play, etc), cultural considerations
80–82
(eg, culture-based
differences in the value placed on risk v safe behaviors, or in
attitudes about interpreting injuries as ‘‘accidents’’) and
economic factors
83
(eg, resources available to support risk v
safety practices). Thus, in developing interventions for children
of elementary-school age, there is a need not only to target
individual attributes but also to consider the child within the
broader socioeconomic context of family, friends, neighborhood
and culture in order to maximize opportunities for success.
CONCLUSION
As shown in fig 1, children’s risk taking is a multi-determined
outcome that is influenced by a variety of child, parent and family,
and social-situational factors, and is set within a broader context
of socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. The findings from
numerous studies confirm that each of the determinants shown in
fig 1 individually predicts risk-taking decisions in children
6–12 years of age, and many factors interact with sex and
contribute to explain why boys engage in greater risk taking than
girls. Although further research is needed to determine how these
factors interact to influence risk taking, our current knowledge
base is sufficiently developed to support the planning of evidence-
based interventions to reduce inappropriate risk taking that
increases injury risk among elementary-school children.
Key points
N
Despite the importance of understanding children’s risk
taking in order to develop effective interventions, no prior
attempt has been made to provide an integrative
synthesis of what is known.
N
Reviewing existing literature shows that children’s risk
taking is multi-determined and influenced by child
attributes, parent–family characteristics and social–situa-
tional factors.
N
Empirical evidence has been synthesized to create a
model that provides a foundation of knowledge to
support development of injury-prevention interventions.
N
Drawing on the research findings and factors highlighted
in this model, numerous suggestions for interventions to
reduce children’s risk taking are provided.
Children’s risk taking 23
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Preparation of the manuscript was supported by grants to the first
author from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and by a grant
to the second author from the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation.
Authors’ affiliations
.......................
Barbara A Morrongiello, Jennifer Lasenby-Lessard, Psychology
Department, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Competing interests: None.
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