Online Risk Taking - Gist & Verbatim

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Photo by Alex Green from Pexels

The article, Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Online Risk Taking: The Role of Gist and Verbatim Representations, dealt with two areas of online risk-taking behaviors (disclosing personal information and in befriending an unknown person online) in adolescents and young adults. It focused on the psychological factors involved in their decision making. The researchers based their work on the Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT). FTT says that there are two different mechanisms used when making decisions about risky behavior. Verbatim representations are based on quantitative and detailed information about events or judgments, or a cost-benefit analysis. Gist representations are qualitative and intuitive. They are based on a person’s values, beliefs, and past experiences.

               The aims of this study were to determine if there were developmental differences between adolescents and young adults when it comes to taking risks online and to measure whether the reliance on a specific type of representation (gist or verbatim) could explain risk taking behavior among these two groups.

Participants were from three schools (a secondary, a further education college, and a university). They were divided into two groups: adolescents (13 to 17-years old) and young adults (18 to 24-years old). Participants completed a paper booklet survey or an online survey (university only), which asked about past risk-taking behavior and future intentions. Questions that addressed both gist and verbatim representations were included.

               Adolescents took more online risks than young adults and also had significantly higher scores for future intentions. In adolescents, when gist was high, past risk-taking behavior and future intentions were low. When verbatim was high, both areas were also high.

For young adults, there was no significant relationship between past risk-behavior with either gist or verbatim, which could be due to changing reasoning style in the previous 12 months. There was a significant negative correlation with gist and future intentions in young adults.

As expected, adolescents relied both on gist and verbatim, and young adults relied less on verbatim and more on gist. Adolescents disclosed significantly more personal information than young adults, but the chances of each group having made online friends with an unknown person were similar. Adolescents have higher intentions to take risks in future than young adults, but their past risky behavior does not significantly predict the future intentions of adolescents.

               One idea that was interesting to me was the finding that both groups are equally likely to make friends online with unknown people, but adolescents do so at 10 times the rate. This would be a good area for future research. Why does the rate decline, and what drives teens to interact with unknown people at these rates?

Another notable idea from the article was how this information could be used for education and prevention purposes. It has shown that more reliance on gist processes result in more protective behaviors. The researchers suggested that using negatively framed gist messages could be an effective training tool.  These can be put together in ways that are easier to internalize and recall. They also suggested using these messages as part of an online risk prevention campaign on social media. I would be interested to see results from studies where this was done, and I would also like to see examples of ways the gist messaging could be created to help train adolescents.

 

White, C. M., Gummerum, M., & Hanoch, Y. (2015). Adolescents’ and young adults’ online risk taking: The role of gist and verbatim representations. Risk Analysis, 35(8), 1407-1422. https://doi-org.wmlsrsu.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/risa.12369

 

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