adolescence
Definition
Adolescence is a developmental period marked by increases in impulsive and sensation-seeking behaviour, reduced inhibition, and heightened social-affective processing, all of which shape consequential outcomes in decision-making and political attitude formation. Studies drawing on large cohort data show that children who demonstrate superior social cognition at ages 5 and 7 display better risk adjustment strategies at age 14, consistent with a Social-Motivational Flexibility Model that frames adolescent cognitive style as affording adaptive advantages in social competence. Late adolescence and young adulthood are widely recognised as formative periods for political identity development, during which young people are more responsive to sociopolitical events and more susceptible to the influence of emotions such as future anxiety on their ideological orientations. Survey data from 988 UK adolescents aged 16 to 21 indicate that future anxiety is associated with stronger support for democratic principles and higher political participation, with emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal moderating these associations.
Sources: Tsomokos & Flouri (2023), Borghi et al. (2025)
Related Terms
- theory of mind (1 shared article)
- social cognition (1 shared article)
- risk-taking (1 shared article)
- decision-making (1 shared article)
- emotion regulation (1 shared article)
- future anxiety (1 shared article)
- political attitudes (1 shared article)
- ideology (1 shared article)
Applications
Adolescence and Risk Adjustment
Risk adjustment, defined as the ability to modify decisions under uncertainty in light of new information, is a distinct dimension of adolescent decision-making that differs from overall impulsive risk-taking. Data from 9,575 children in the UK Millennium Cohort Study show that superior social cognitive abilities at ages 5 and 7 predict higher risk adjustment scores at age 14, even after controlling for sex, family income, parental education, and verbal ability. This finding supports the view that social competence developed in childhood has measurable consequences for how adolescents flexibly adjust reward-seeking strategies rather than simply inhibiting impulse.
Sources: Tsomokos & Flouri (2023)
Adolescence and Future Anxiety
Future anxiety, characterised by feelings of pessimism and uncertainty about what lies ahead, has particular salience during late adolescence and young adulthood when political identities are being formed. In a pre-registered cross-sectional study, future anxiety among 16 to 21 year old UK adolescents was most strongly associated with increased support for democratic principles, while exploratory analyses showed that among young men only, future anxiety was linked to right-conservative ideological self-classification. The association between future anxiety and support for authoritarian versus democratic principles was moderated by cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy that becomes more available to young people across the adolescent years.
Sources: Borghi et al. (2025)
Adolescence and Emotion Regulation
Across adolescence, young people become progressively more capable of drawing on adaptive emotion regulation strategies, with cognitive reappraisal emerging as a significant moderator of how future anxiety translates into political attitudes. Among adolescents low in cognitive reappraisal, future anxiety showed a positive association with authoritarianism, whereas this association was negative for those scoring high in cognitive reappraisal. Expressive suppression, by contrast, was not expected to substantially alter these associations because it modulates behavioural responses without changing the underlying emotional experience or its interpretation.
Sources: Borghi et al. (2025)
