The gist of it

We think we know the problem with teenagers; for instance, they don’t properly weigh or appreciate the risks of a particular activity and so they drive too fast, have unprotected sex, drink, do drugs, etc. On the contrary, in an article in The International Herald Tribune, Dr. Valerie Reyna of Cornell claims, “adolescents are very well aware of their vulnerability and . . . they actually overestimate their risk of suffering negative effects from activities like drinking and unprotected sex.” In fact, she says, “We found that teenagers quite rationally weigh benefits and risks. But when they do that, the equation delivers the message to go ahead and do that, because to the teen the benefits outweigh the risks.” So, the basic problem is that “teens tend to weight benefits more heavily than risks when making decisions.”

Therefore, she argues, traditional approaches to curbing dangerous behavior in teenagers is counter-productive because trying to alter their behavior by emphasizing the actual risk involved in a particular activity may do nothing more than demonstrate to the teenager that it is in fact not as risky as he or she had believed. Dr. Reyna advocates a different approach, one that teaches teenagers how to grasp the “gist” of a situation.

She explained that as people grew older and more experienced, they became more intuitive, and more of their decisions were based on what she calls “gist,” an overall sense of what is the best course of action. This approach, in which “one sees the forest more than the trees,” enables adults to reach the bottom line more quickly and, in the process, reduce their risky behaviors.

For example, while an adolescent might consider playing Russian roulette for a $1 million payoff, a normal adult would not give it a moment’s thought. Cutting directly to the chase, the adult would be more inclined to think: “No way! No amount of money is worth a one in six chance of dying.” “Young people don’t get it,” Reyna said. “They don’t get the gist of a situation.” A gist-based approach to decision making results in simple, black-and-white conclusions of good or bad, safe or dangerous.

A word of advice to the parents of adolescents concludes the article.

Reyna warned: “Younger adolescents don’t learn from consequences as well as older adolescents do. So rather than relying on them to make reasoned choices or to learn from the school of hard knocks, a better approach is to supervise them.”

In other words, young teenagers need to be protected from themselves by removing opportunities for risk-taking — for example, by filling their time with positive activities and protecting them from risky situations that are likely to be tempting or that require “behavioral inhibition.”

A young teenage girl should not be left alone in the house with her boyfriend, and responsible adults should be omnipresent and alcohol absent when teenagers have parties.

Enclave extremism

In an article in The Chronicle Review, “The Polarization of Extremes,” Cass R. Sunstein examines a phenomenon that he calls enclave extremism: “When people end up in enclaves of like-minded people, they usually move toward a more extreme point in the direction to which the group’s members were originally inclined.” He cites a 2005 Colorado experiment that studied this phenomenon.

About 60 Americans were brought together and assembled into a number of groups, each consisting of five or six people. Members of each group were asked to deliberate on three of the most controversial issues of the day: Should states allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions? Should employers engage in affirmative action by giving a preference to members of traditionally disadvantaged groups? Should the United States sign an international treaty to combat global warming?

As the experiment was designed, the groups consisted of “liberal” and “conservative” enclaves — the former from Boulder, the latter from Colorado Springs. It is widely known that Boulder tends to be liberal, and Colorado Springs tends to be conservative. Participants were screened to ensure that they generally conformed to those stereotypes. People were asked to state their opinions anonymously both before and after 15 minutes of group discussion. What was the effect of that discussion?

In almost every case, people held more-extreme positions after they spoke with like-minded others. Discussion made civil unions more popular among liberals and less popular among conservatives. Liberals favored an international treaty to control global warming before discussion; they favored it far more strongly after discussion. Conservatives were neutral on that treaty before discussion, but they strongly opposed it after discussion. Liberals, mildly favorable toward affirmative action before discussion, became strongly favorable toward affirmative action after discussion. Firmly negative about affirmative action before discussion, conservatives became fiercely negative about affirmative action after discussion.

The creation of enclaves of like-minded people had a second effect: It made both liberal groups and conservative groups significantly more homogeneous — and thus squelched diversity. Before people started to talk, many groups displayed a fair amount of internal disagreement on the three issues. The disagreements were greatly reduced as a result of a mere 15-minute discussion. In their anonymous statements, group members showed far more consensus after discussion than before. The discussion greatly widened the rift between liberals and conservatives on all three issues.

As he later points out, enclave extremism is not inherently a bad thing. Rather like conviction, it all depends on what it’s about. For instance, he notes, “Increased extremism, fed by discussions among like-minded people, has helped fuel many movements of great value — including, for example, the civil-rights movement, the antislavery movement, the antigenocide movement, the attack on communism in Eastern Europe, and the movement for gender equality.” On the other hand, he also notes, enclave extremism can result in “the rise of Nazism, terrorism, and cults of various sorts.”

Watch what you eat

How this latest study of mice might translate into the human realm, no one yet knows. For now, though, the study suggests that what a prospective mother eats may affect whether one is more likely to have a girl or a boy. In a study by Elissa Cameron, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, the blood-glucose levels of female mice were manipulated to test what effect they would have on the sex ratios of the offspring. The results were dramatic: “The mice that received the steroid saw their glucose levels drop compared to untreated mice, and they gave birth to sons 42% of the time versus 54% of the time for sugar-rich mothers.”

The results seem to confirm earlier research that “has shown an association between more male offspring and a spike in blood sugar due to stress or food abundance.” And, it also seems to confirm a hypothesis proposed by biologists Robert Trivers and Dan Willard in the 1970s:

Pregnant animals invest more in offspring that will give them the largest number of grandchildren. For species in which males mate with more than one female, healthy mothers should have more boys, whereas less healthy mothers should have more girls.Although weak female offspring still find someone to mate with, weak males may never mate at all.

Thus, healthy female mice, those with high sugar levels, should be expected to give birth to more sons, and that is exactly what this latest study has found.

So, while there is no guarantee that the results would hold for humans, one can bet that in coming weeks there will be books and articles claiming that you can increase your odds of having a girl or boy with a steady diet of chocolates and sweets or abstinence from them. (Will there be a boom in candy sales in China?)