Current Theories of Risk and Rational Decision Making.

There are few topics that are more important than risk and rational decision making, as the contributions to this special issue attest. If we contemplate the risks and consequences of smoking, substance use, reckless driving, violent crime, and unprotected sex, we cannot help but conjure up an image of the stereotypical, irrational risk taker: the adolescent. Statistics confirm that adolescents and young adults are disproportionately responsible for carnage on the highway, new cases of HIV/AIDS, initiation of poor lifestyle choices such as smoking and unhealthy eating, and a host of other risk-taking behaviors that pose challenges for the law, public health, clinical psychology, and public policy (Reyna & Farley, 2006). Therefore, it is not surprising that the articles contained in this issue on risk and rational decision making focus on adolescence, which had been neglected until the recent flurry of work on this time of life. Although the focus is on adolescence, and on the developmental differences between adolescents and other age groups, the implications of this body of work are far-reaching. Each contributor has articulated a theoretical framework that is guiding the science of risky behavior in new directions, albeit from varied perspectives (e.g., emphasizing cognitive, social, emotional, public health, or behavioral neuroscience approaches). The discussant, a distinguished legal scholar, has ably integrated the papers and identified key theoretical and policy implications. Theories of adult behavior must take account of these perspectives or leave themselves open to the obvious criticisms that they are (a) incomplete because they ignore the origins of behavior and (b) irrelevant because they ignore major causes of death and human suffering. Thus, this special issue provides an authoritative review of developmental research on risk and rational decision making, with fundamental implications for theories of reasoning, judgment, and decision making, especially neurobiological and dual-process theories.