Interaction of reward seeking and self-regulation in the prediction of risk taking: A cross-national test of the dual systems model

• Main Authors: Natasha Duell, Laurence Steinberg, Jason Chein, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Dario Bacchini, Chang Lei, Nandita Chaudhary, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Kostas A. Fanti, Jennifer E. Lansford, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Liane Peña Alampay
• Format: Journal
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Psychology; Social Sciences
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=84984878736&origin=inward; http://cmuir.cmu.ac.th/jspui/handle/6653943832/56316
• Institution: Chiang Mai University

© 2016 American Psychological Association. In the present analysis, we test the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking in a cross-national sample of over 5,200 individuals aged 10 through 30 (M = 17.05 years, SD = 5.91) from 11 countries. We examine whether reward seeking and self-regulation make independent, additive, or interactive contributions to risk taking, and ask whether these relations differ as a function of age and culture. To compare across cultures, we conduct 2 sets of analyses: 1 comparing individuals from Asian and Western countries, and 1 comparing individuals from low- and high-GDP countries. Results indicate that reward seeking and self-regulation have largely independent associations with risk taking and that the influences of each variable on risk taking are not unique to adolescence, but that their link to risk taking varies across cultures.