PROBING TEENS PROMPTS RISK-TAKING

Asking About Unsafe Sex, Drinking, Using Drugs May Lead Youths To The
Activities

Asking teens about risky behaviour is risky, according to U.S.
researchers who say merely asking about unsafe sex, drinking or using
drugs may make teens more likely to engage in the activities.

"When we ask questions, it can actually change people's behaviours,"
says Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke
University in Durham, N.C.

Reporting in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Fitzsimons says the
reality of teen life is sobering. In the past 30 days, 43.3 per cent
of our children have drunk alcohol, 9.9 per cent have driven a car or
other vehicle when they had been drinking alcohol and 20 per cent
have used marijuana, he and co-author Sarah Moore write. In Canada,
12 per cent of boys and 13 per cent of girls have sex by age 14 or
15, according to Statistics Canada.

Most teens have conflicting attitudes toward risky behaviour, and
growing research suggests that asking them about it reminds them of
inconsistencies between what they want to do and what they should do,
Fitzsimons says. Asking about risky behaviour, he says, may
inadvertently activate a more positive attitude toward doing it.

In an experiment, one group of college students was asked a question
about exercising; another group was asked a question about how many
times they would use illegal drugs in the coming two months.

At the end of the two-month period, both groups were asked to report
how many times they had used drugs. The control group said they used
drugs an average of once over the two-month period. The group asked
the drug question said they used an average of 2.8 times.

When the researchers broke it down and looked only at those who had
reported at least some drug use in the past, the students asked about
drugs reported using drugs an average of 10.3 times over the
two-month study period, versus an average of four times by the control group.

In another experiment, researchers found that asking a question about
drinking increased use of alcohol from 1.2 times to 3.2 times over a week.

It's hard to pin down exactly what's happening in the mind,
Fitzsimons said in an interview. "People have these implicit and
explicit attitudes toward things. At a conscious level, you may say,
'Oh, you know, drinking a lot is bad for me and I shouldn't do that,'
and I answer, no I won't do that.

"But at a gut level, there's a desire to engage in these vices,
especially for these young people."

Why do questions tap into that? "We believe that when you just ask
the question and don't engage in any followup at all, people have a
flash of themselves engaging in that vice behaviour.

"This puts a huge onus on parents. We really just have to commit to
really engaging in really hard and difficult and lengthy dialogues to
try to get our kids to change their underlying gut-level responses to
some of these behaviours."