{"id":52763,"date":"2020-06-16T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T07:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=52763"},"modified":"2020-06-15T21:03:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T04:03:24","slug":"expecting-students-to-play-it-safe-if-colleges-reopen-is-a-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/expecting-students-to-play-it-safe-if-colleges-reopen-is-a-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Expecting students to play it safe if Colleges reopen Is a fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nA number of American colleges and universities have decided to bring students back to campus this fall, believing they can diminish the risk of coronavirus transmission if everyone wears masks, uses hand sanitizer and social distances. Some schools also plan to\u00a0reconfigure dorms to create family-sized clusters<\/a>\u00a0of uninfected students, who could socialize in relative safety, if only with their suite mates.<\/p>\n

These plans are so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff.<\/p>\n

My skepticism about the strategies under consideration is not based on videos of college students frolicking on Florida\u2019s beaches when they were explicitly told to avoid large gatherings. Rather, it comes from more than 40 years teaching and researching young people.<\/p>\n

Most types of risky behavior \u2014 reckless driving, criminal activity, fighting, unsafe sex and binge drinking, to name just a few \u2014\u00a0peak during the late teens and early 20s<\/a>. Moreover, interventions designed to diminish risk-taking in this age group, such as attempts to squelch binge drinking on campus,\u00a0have an underwhelming track record<\/a>. There is little reason to think that the approaches proposed to mitigate transmission of the coronavirus among college students will fare any better. A series of studies that compare the ways in which young people and adults think and make decisions about risk-taking confirms this.<\/p>\n

The late-adolescent peak in risky behavior has been found pretty much around the world. Although risky behavior is more common in some countries than others, the heightened risk-taking characteristic of adolescents, relative to adults, is more or less universal. My colleagues and I recently completed\u00a0a study of more than 5,000 people<\/a>\u00a0between the ages of 10 and 30 from 11 different countries (including both Western and non-Western ones). Respondents answered a series of questions about the extent to which they had engaged in various types of risk-taking. Consistent with large-scale epidemiological studies, we found a peak in risk-taking somewhere between age 20 and 24 in virtually every country.<\/p>\n

Our team has also conducted\u00a0experiments in which we test participants on various risk-taking tasks<\/a>\u00a0under controlled conditions, which allows us to rule out any age differences in real-world risk-taking that might be caused by environmental factors, such as opportunity or cultural norms. As in our survey studies, risk-taking peaked during adolescence. Other studies, using different samples, have reached similar conclusions.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also conducted a\u00a0series of experiments<\/a>\u00a0designed to identify just what it is about college-age individuals that accounts for their relatively greater propensity to take risks. Three factors appear to be most important.<\/p>\n

First,\u00a0this is the age at which we are most sensitive and responsive to the potential rewards of a risky choice<\/a>, relative to the potential costs. College-age people are just as good as their elders at perceiving these benefits and dangers, but compared with older people, those who are college-aged give more weight to the potential gains. They are especially drawn to short-term rewards.<\/p>\n

Second,\u00a0college-aged people have more trouble exercising self-control<\/a>\u00a0than do those in their late 20s and beyond, an age difference that is amplified when people are emotionally aroused. Under calm conditions, college-age individuals can control their impulses as well as their elders, but when they are emotionally aroused, they evince the poor self-control of teenagers.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Dr. Steinberg is a professor of psychology at Temple University and the author of \u201cAge of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of American colleges and universities have decided to bring students back to campus this fall, believing they can diminish the risk of coronavirus transmission if everyone wears masks, uses hand sanitizer and social distances. Some schools also plan to\u00a0reconfigure dorms to create family-sized clusters\u00a0of uninfected students, who could socialize in relative safety, if […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":52764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[351628],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-52763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-covid-19"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nExpecting students to play it safe if Colleges reopen Is a fantasy - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/expecting-students-to-play-it-safe-if-colleges-reopen-is-a-fantasy\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Expecting students to play it safe if Colleges reopen Is a fantasy - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A number of American colleges and universities have decided to bring students back to campus this fall, believing they can diminish the risk of coronavirus transmission if everyone wears masks, uses hand sanitizer and social distances. 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