Decision Making in Adolescents - Part 2

There are many factors affecting decision making in adolescents and they include cognitive, psychological, social, cultural and societal factors. Cognitive influences have to do with mental processes and brainpower. There is a particular sequence in the normal development of the hardware used in decision making. Until this is fully functioning, they can be very poor at assessing risk and overly optimistic about their ability to avoid threatening situations. They may be unable to accurately assess the probability of negative consequences.