Towards a hybrid criminological and psychological model of risk behavior: The developmental neuro-ecological risk-taking model (DNERM)

Adolescents have long been characterized as the stereotypical risk-takers, due to their apparent heightened risk behavior (e.g., delinquency, substance use). Hence, the raising of minimum ages for substance use are common legal actions that presume that limiting the exposure to substances (i.e., “risk exposure”) will decrease such heightened adolescent risk behavior. This ecological concept of risk exposure (access to risk conducive situations) is acknowledged in criminological models—to some extent. However, risk exposure is virtually absent from contemporary psychological models, which focus on neuropsychological development, particularly socio-affective and cognitive control development. Moreover, when theories in these disciplines do consider risk exposure, the ubiquitous developmental (i.e., age-dependent) component of this concept is overlooked. For example, in the real-word, adolescents encounter far more risk conducive situations (both offline and online) than children, which could at least partially account for heightened adolescent risk behaviors compared to children. A meta-analysis (Defoe et al. 2015) on laboratory studies provided suggestive evidence for this assertion. Namely, this meta-analysis showed that in laboratory settings—where risk exposure is equal for all participants regardless of age—children and adolescents are generally equally susceptible to engage in risks. Hence, in the above-mentioned meta-analysis, a hybrid Developmental Neuro-Ecological Risk-taking Model (DNERM) was put forward. DNERM emphasizes an interaction between adolescents’ neuropsychological development and their changing physical- and social- ecology, which is further embedded in a cultural context. The current paper further develops DNERM’s aims, which include bridging contemporary psychology models with criminology models to comprehensively describe the development of risk behavior during the youth period (ages 11–24).