| The decisions made by adults and adolescents often differ significantly when individuals from each group are exposed to similar or identical information and decision making conditions. Controlled laboratory experiments are utilized to examine two potential explanations for observed differences in the patterns of decisions made across groups.;First, individual discount rates, an indication of how individuals factor the future into a decision-making context, are elicited from adolescents. The results of this experiment are compared to individual discount rates elicited from adults in prior studies. The data support the hypothesis that adolescents have significantly higher discount rates than adults. This finding suggests that adolescents may use the same decision-making process as adults when making decisions involving risk, but that increased discounting of the future by adolescents will lead to decisions that would not be made by adults who exhibit less discounting of the future.;Second, perceptions of risk regarding smoking behavior are elicited before and after exposing subjects to relevant information to determine (a) whether adolescents have different risk perceptions regarding smoking, and (b) whether adolescents change those risk perceptions when exposed to salient risk information. I find that adolescents generally have a higher perception of the risks associated with smoking and that perception increases when subjects are exposed to a prepared information package. This finding suggests that adolescents may be more risk loving than their adult counterparts, all else equal. |
