title: Reckless Behaviour in Emerging Adulthood: A Psychosocial Approach
Creators: name: Teese, Robert
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Late teens
subject: Reckless behaviours
subject: Psychosocial model
subject: Bivariate correlational analyses
subject: Hierarchical multiple regression analyses

description: The emerging adult years, extending from the late teens through the 20s, are commonly associated with peak physical health and being in the “prime” of one’s life. However, these years are also associated with peak lifetime prevalence rates of a number of reckless health-risk behaviours including alcohol and illicit substance use, dangerous driving, and unsafe sexual behaviour. Despite increased research attention, these preventable behaviours remain amongst the major contributing factors to morbidity and mortality rates of young people. The current thesis presents and tests a psychosocial model of emerging adult reckless behaviour comprising factors from each of the personality, social, cognitive, and affective domains of influence. More specifically, the research program assessed the predictive utility of each of sensation seeking, impulsivity, peer pressure, parental support, perceived risks, perceived benefits, positive affect, negative affect, and affective intensity in accounting for emerging adult involvement in each of reckless alcohol use, reckless illicit drug use, reckless driving, reckless sexual behaviour, and overall recklessness. In addition to two pilot studies, cross-sequential self-report research methods yielded three main studies of Australian emerging adults, one longitudinal (6 month time frame), and two cross-sectional. The first main cross-sectional study tested the proposed psychosocial model of recklessness on a sample of 283 emerging adults. Bivariate correlational analyses demonstrated that each of the components of the psychosocial model, except parental influence, were associated with at least one form of reckless behaviour. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses consistently demonstrated the utility of perceived benefits as the main predictor of emerging adult reckless behaviour involvement. Preliminary evidence of moderator effects were also found. The second main cross-sectional study tested a slightly revised version of the model on a sample of 952 emerging adults. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the psychosocial model accounted for significant variance in emerging adult reckless behaviour, ranging between 20.9% (reckless driving behaviour) to 47.0% (overall recklessness). All psychosocial factors demonstrated either significant unique contributions, or were involved in a significant moderation effect, for at least one form of reckless behaviour. The study replicated the previous finding that perceived benefits was the strongest unique predictor of reckless behaviour involvement, however, this association was interpreted in light of significant moderation effects. The third main study was a two-wave (six months apart) longitudinal analysis of the psychosocial model, investigating both stability and change effects in a sample of 583 emerging adults. Lagged regression analyses demonstrated that T1 predictors accounted for significant variance in T2 outcomes over the 6 month time frame, ranging from 16.0% (reckless driving behaviour) to 37.2% (overall reckless behaviour), with predictive relationships that mostly mirrored cross-sectional findings. One notable exception to this was in relation to perceived risks, which did not demonstrate strong predictive utility in the cross-sectional findings, but was predictive of T1 to T2 stability for all forms of recklessness, except sexual behaviour. Whilst change in behaviour over the six-month time frame was minimal, investigation of T1 to T2 change effects demonstrated that change in predictor variables accounted for significant change in reckless behaviour involvement across all forms of recklessness. Results as a whole demonstrate the significance of perceived benefits as a key factor in emerging adult reckless behaviour. Whilst its influence can occur via moderating effects, it was consistently the strongest unique predictor across each of the various forms of recklessness. This could have significant implications for how behavioural interventions target cognitive influence pathways, and suggests that rather than continuing to ensure that young people are aware of the possible dangers associated with excessive drinking, illicit substance use, dangerous driving or unsafe sexual practices, increased emphasis should be placed on challenging their perceptions of the benefits derived from these behaviours. When combined with the lagged regression effects, the findings demonstrate the continued influence of cognitive factors on reckless behaviour engagement, even after accounting for demographic, personality, and social influences. The research program further demonstrated the importance of assessing the relative influence of multiple predictors simultaneously across various forms of reckless behaviour. Whilst some predictors demonstrated consistent links to recklessness regardless of type, others such as peer pressure and impulsivity were predictive of some forms of reckless engagement but not others. Such findings demonstrate that there are likely to be multiple pathways towards reckless behaviour involvement, with these pathways differing with the behaviour of interest. This suggests that interventions continuing down a ‘one approach fits all’ approach are likely to have limited success in reducing emerging adult reckless behaviour involvement.