As mentioned in the Welcome post, I became interested in the topic because I myself believed that teenagers are inherently less capable of making good decisions when my intro psychology professor told us that the brain won’t fully develop until we become 22 year-old.
I would like to become a psychologist or at least use what I am learning at college, so I want to be as much accurate as I can in my comments on anything related to psychology. With a degree in psychology, I feel I have responsibility in doing my best to be accurate when people ask me as a psychology major. In addition, it is important for me to be able to admit that psychology may not have revealed much about the human psych yet. If asked to evaluate how “solid” the discipline is as a science, I do not think many psychological experiments can accurately control human behaviors like other scientific disciplines, since it is almost impossible to create the identical environments and people in a lab. So, tackling with this myth has reminded me of the importance in being able to always consider alternative explanations to any psychological findings.
In addition, I am old enough to have my own kids. If I do have some kids in the future, I would like to make a fair judgment on to what extent I am responsible for their behaviors. If I did not think about the myth in the blog, I would have probably used the myth to give up disciplining my kids and have just strictly supervised them, depriving them of any freedom.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Vulnerable Population
Parents
If parents do not want to believe that teens’ risky behaviors are consequences of their inabilities in disciplining their children, they may use the teenage brain myth as an excuse to why their children are not behaving well.
Therapists for Child Discipline
When therapists want to prove their competence over other therapists, they want some edge that can make them stand out. Since the public likes science, adding any topic in the brain science to their talk may allow those therapists to get more customers.
The media
Newspapers and popular magazines cannot provide latest scientific findings in detail because of their limited space and duty to be eye-catching, which leads them to omit limitations to those primary findings.
Brain Scientists and the Pharmaceutical Industry
This may sound weird, but it may be not if we consider who are funding their research. For example, if a pharmaceutical company funds a research, they want a result showing that the brain structure and functions strongly affect human risky behaviors; the pharmaceutical industry needs to show how medication can help control people’s behaviors. Therefore, brain scientists (psychologists?) are expected to find positive results, not negative results. If brain scientists are valued only when they find a strong influence of the brain structure and functions on behaviors, then it is easy to imagine that they may want to overestimate or overstate the role of the brain in human behaviors, which could also support the legitimacy of the teenage brain myth.
If parents do not want to believe that teens’ risky behaviors are consequences of their inabilities in disciplining their children, they may use the teenage brain myth as an excuse to why their children are not behaving well.
Therapists for Child Discipline
When therapists want to prove their competence over other therapists, they want some edge that can make them stand out. Since the public likes science, adding any topic in the brain science to their talk may allow those therapists to get more customers.
The media
Newspapers and popular magazines cannot provide latest scientific findings in detail because of their limited space and duty to be eye-catching, which leads them to omit limitations to those primary findings.
Brain Scientists and the Pharmaceutical Industry
This may sound weird, but it may be not if we consider who are funding their research. For example, if a pharmaceutical company funds a research, they want a result showing that the brain structure and functions strongly affect human risky behaviors; the pharmaceutical industry needs to show how medication can help control people’s behaviors. Therefore, brain scientists (psychologists?) are expected to find positive results, not negative results. If brain scientists are valued only when they find a strong influence of the brain structure and functions on behaviors, then it is easy to imagine that they may want to overestimate or overstate the role of the brain in human behaviors, which could also support the legitimacy of the teenage brain myth.
Cultural Differences
Japan: the topic is not popular in Japan compared to effective learning for young children such as Mozart Effect.
Why do Japanese not concern the teenage brain as much as Americans?
My 100% unscientific hypotheses are:
Psychology is not as much popular as in the U.S.
The amount of information and the public attention to psychology in Japan may be significantly lower than in the U.S.
Japanese teens are already under stricter supervision than those in the U.S. Americans may be torn between supervision and nurturing self-responsibility of children.
Japan has more equal distribution of wealth than the U.S.
Teens in Japan, with OK economic back grounds, may be able to avoid dealing with the dark side of the society such as drugs and violence.
Japan is safer than in the U.S.
Again, less experience in the dark side of the society may reduce the risk of teenagers’ criminal behaviors.
The Japanese media has less impact on teens’ behaviors.
Even though the Japanese media such as Manga and TV games are sometimes accused of showing violence, according to my observation, American movies and TV dramas show , for example, more aggressive scenes than Japanese ones. American teens may learn more risky behaviors than Japanese teens do from the media. In addition, watching real humans acting immaturely in movies may have more impact on teens’ behaviors than reading unreal pictures in Manga or animation. Compared to American movies and TV shows, Japanese ones are very mild.
Why do Japanese not concern the teenage brain as much as Americans?
My 100% unscientific hypotheses are:
Psychology is not as much popular as in the U.S.
The amount of information and the public attention to psychology in Japan may be significantly lower than in the U.S.
Japanese teens are already under stricter supervision than those in the U.S. Americans may be torn between supervision and nurturing self-responsibility of children.
Japan has more equal distribution of wealth than the U.S.
Teens in Japan, with OK economic back grounds, may be able to avoid dealing with the dark side of the society such as drugs and violence.
Japan is safer than in the U.S.
Again, less experience in the dark side of the society may reduce the risk of teenagers’ criminal behaviors.
The Japanese media has less impact on teens’ behaviors.
Even though the Japanese media such as Manga and TV games are sometimes accused of showing violence, according to my observation, American movies and TV dramas show , for example, more aggressive scenes than Japanese ones. American teens may learn more risky behaviors than Japanese teens do from the media. In addition, watching real humans acting immaturely in movies may have more impact on teens’ behaviors than reading unreal pictures in Manga or animation. Compared to American movies and TV shows, Japanese ones are very mild.
Most Important Misunderstanding
The most important misunderstanding is thatscience confirmed teenagers are innately unable to think as well as adults. No matter how much we train the teenage brain, it fails to make mature decisions because the brain can only develop according to one’s biological age.
First and foremost, scientists have never found any causation that teenagers are innately prone to make bad decisions.
Second, the same brain makes different decisions according to different environmental cues; that is, if teens are in an environment that induces risky actions typical in adolescence, they of course show more risky behaviors and different actions than adult. For example, teenagers may use drugs because their peers do. We could of course hypothesize that this is because teenagers are generally vulnerable to that temptation. However, can we eliminate a possibility that the society have been failing to teach teenagers mature behaviors compared to the society in the past, when many teenagers were treated as adults (like when human beings could only live for 50 years)? If this is the case, we cannot only blame the teenage behaviors on the teenage brain.
Overall, many people assume that the teenage brain is inherently less capable of making mature decisions than the adult brain because most newspaper articles and speakers for disciplining children do not mention the importance of social contexts in adolescent behaviors. It may lead the society to placing teenagers under more extreme supervisions of parents and the society, preventing adolescents from making their own life decisions.
First and foremost, scientists have never found any causation that teenagers are innately prone to make bad decisions.
Second, the same brain makes different decisions according to different environmental cues; that is, if teens are in an environment that induces risky actions typical in adolescence, they of course show more risky behaviors and different actions than adult. For example, teenagers may use drugs because their peers do. We could of course hypothesize that this is because teenagers are generally vulnerable to that temptation. However, can we eliminate a possibility that the society have been failing to teach teenagers mature behaviors compared to the society in the past, when many teenagers were treated as adults (like when human beings could only live for 50 years)? If this is the case, we cannot only blame the teenage behaviors on the teenage brain.
Overall, many people assume that the teenage brain is inherently less capable of making mature decisions than the adult brain because most newspaper articles and speakers for disciplining children do not mention the importance of social contexts in adolescent behaviors. It may lead the society to placing teenagers under more extreme supervisions of parents and the society, preventing adolescents from making their own life decisions.
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