Positive World, Positive People
PoWoPoPe episodes are designed for teenage audiences, specifically covering various unique topics that relate to early life and development. Episodes range from discussions on the impacts of social media to discovering one's true self.
Positive World, Positive People
Adolescent Decision Making Uncovered with Dr. Berna Güroglu
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I want to start with a moment most of us have had: you’re in a situation where you have to decide something quickly; maybe your friends are watching, maybe emotions are high, and in that moment, the choice feels obvious. Later, though, when everything calms down, you look back and wonder: “Why didn’t I think that through?” Those moments can feel confusing, but they’re also incredibly common during the teenage years. So for today’s episode, I wanted to explore: Why does decision-making feel so different under pressure? To help us understand this, I’m really excited to welcome Dr. Berna Güroğlu.
Hey everyone and welcome to Growing Forward. I am your host, Sadie Sunabore Maliki, a 16-year-old from Southern California, and I'm really happy that you're here spending your time with us today. I want to start with a moment that most of us have had sometime in our life. You're in a situation where you have to decide something quickly. Maybe your friends are watching, maybe emotions are high. And in that moment, the choice feels obvious. But later, when everything calms down, you look back and wonder, why didn't I think that through? Maybe that decision wasn't actually the good choice. Those moments can feel confusing, but they are also very incredibly common during the teenage, adolescent, and pre-adult years. So for today's episode, I wanted to explore why does decision making feel so different under pressure? How does stress, emotion, and peer influence shape the choices teens, young adults make, and what's actually happening in those moments inside of us? To help us understand this, I'm really excited to welcome Dr. Berna Groglu, developmental scientist at Leiden University, whose work focuses on adolescent process, social information, and making decisions in peer contexts. Her research examines how the teenage brain responds to peer influence, emotional feedback, and social situations such as cooperation and fairness. So without wasting any more time, Dr. Groglu, thank you so much for being here today and welcome to Growing Forward.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_02And I want to get some context about who you are on the bigger scale. So to begin our conversation, what led you to study adolescent development, particularly how young people make decisions in social situations?
SPEAKER_00To put it into even bigger perspective, my background originally was math. I was studying math. But over time I realized that I'm really interested in why we do what we do. So that got me more rolled into psychology. And my initial research was focused on friendships in childhood and adolescence. And in trying to understand what friendships do with our behavior, I rolled into more looking at behavior from an experimental perspective, not like asking people, what would you do if you were in this situation? But really trying to see what they do. Started using experimental tasks where they could like make some decisions and then adapt that to like imagine you're making these decisions with your friends or it's someone you dislike, really trying to understand how the larger peer context or our relationships influence our behavior.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I love how you actually mentioned that you started in math because in different episodes, we've really talked about this idea of discovering who we are and what we want to do. And in the society that we're in currently, a lot of the times adolescents and young adults kind of get stuck on this one mind track that they can't move off of. But as you've just proven, you can start in one place and totally flip the script and go into a different field. And it can turn out to be equally as successful. So not only did you describe your experience to this point, but you also showcased another one of those big major components of our lives that change is sometimes necessary and it can be good to actually produce an end-all positive result. So thank you for giving that context. And let's jump straight into the questions. So when teens or young adults make decisions under pressure, it often feels very different than when they're alone. When we're alone, we have the cognitive ability to think through things on a different scale, and things don't always feel as consuming. So during those moments in time when pressure is elevated, what happens psychologically in those moments?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's a really good question because it's something that we're all familiar with, I think. Um even if you're young, old, it doesn't matter. Sometimes when you're making decisions in context, you do things that afterwards maybe do not seem so logical. I guess part of the reason is like trying to understand what your brain is doing and your how your brain is um coming up with those decisions and and behaviors at the moment. Um and you might be thinking, like, I'm trying to like really make a cognitive decision, but your brain is constantly processing information. Whether you're aware of it or conscious or not, especially in social context where you're surrounded with other people that you care about, uh, it's constantly also trying to make decisions regarding do I fit in? How do I look? Does it make sense? And we might not be aware of it, but all these things weigh into the complete process and might actually influence it to an extent that you wish it wouldn't. So a part of that like subconscious decision-making part is might be the reason why we end up doing things that we are not afterwards so happy about.
SPEAKER_02And in those moments, are there ways that we can kind of realize that our subconscious is kicking in, or is it just kind of that state that we don't even know about all the time?
SPEAKER_00I mean, you could tell yourself when you're trying to make that decision, if you want. I I guess you could say, like, let me give myself a couple of seconds, a couple of seconds of a pause in between and think, kind of be a bit more aware of uh mindful of that moment. But I must say that it's probably quite challenging as well. You know, we go we go through kind of through the world, through our lives, making a lot of decisions automatically and very, very quickly. So I guess it's a really big challenge to be aware of it and kind of being mindful about like what we experience and our context and everything would probably help that you think, would I would I be doing this if I were alone? Would I say the same thing? Would I, do I think I'll be happy about this tomorrow?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you really can realize at that moment that it's a big decision, maybe, or you might want to think about it. At the same time, I guess um it's it's quite taxing to be aware of that all the time. So we should also be happy that our brain is has that capacity to like do a lot of things automatically, but it couldn't be functioning really if we were to think about everything very consciously. So it's also good to let some of that happen. But if you were really in a situation that you think like this is this is this could be important, you could like give yourself some time to kind of let that in a way, prefrontal cortex kick in to kind of be more aware of that decision you're making.
SPEAKER_02Definitely. It involves so many different components. And sometimes when those decision-making kind of experiences happen and they turn out negatively, we try to avoid it and we try to not dive into all of that influence and things of that nature. But as you said, it's sometimes good to let those things kick in and have that subconscious mindset guiding us a little bit because with everything in life, it has to be this scale. We have to balance out the two sides, which is incredibly difficult, but it is gonna truly make a difference. For peers specifically, or adolescent peers specifically, research shows that these people or these peers can strongly influence decision making during adolescence. Why are teenagers and young adults and even some pre-adolescents especially sensitive to peer presence or approval both inside of school and in extracurricular activities?
SPEAKER_00I guess there are two different aspects that are really important to understand in answering your question. One is seeing adolescence as this developmental period where you're really learning to be and increasingly more like widening your world, and you're capable of doing much more than you did as a child. You spend much more time without adults being around. You can do more things, and that's also the phase that you're exploring a lot of things, trying to figure out who you are and trying to figure out like what you want to do and like everything that comes along with it. And the attention shifts uh a lot to the peers, as also they're going through the same thing, and you spend a lot of time together with them at school. For example, majority of your time is is together. And along with this independence and widening of your world and exploring different things, the focus shifts also towards the peer group as the same group. So they're they become really, really important for you. And from a neuroscience perspective, what we um in the results of our studies from the last last like um, I don't know, 15, 20 years, I guess, we're uh increasingly better at understanding how the brain works and what's changing in this period. In my previous uh answer, I really quickly mentioned the prefrontal cortex, but this is mainly the part of your brain that is uh very important for all kinds of decision-making, regulation, uh, and more the cognitive thinking, uh, regulation of your emotions and behaviors, and so on. And another part of the brain that's much more subcortical and in a way the older parts of the brain, if we look at brain development from an evolutionary perspective, is the part that's more responding to stimulus based on motivation and related to rewards and and and what we see is that these different parts of the brain have different developmental trajectories. So, what happens is across adolescents the um prefrontal cortex keeps developing, and that fits with our idea of you're more and more increasingly able to think in more complex ways and kind of think of the future in a much different way than young kids do. This fits in with the fact that prefrontal cortex is developing and you're better at like all these regulatory abilities are also growing. What we see is that the brain regions that are related to processing emotions, and with emotions, I do not only mean being happy or um but also anything that relates to reward in the sense that it will make you keep doing something again because it's so positive. Okay. Or fear because it's so negative that it will kind of want you not to do something again. So these are the brain regions that show um kind of a very speeded, increased developmental trajectory starting in early adolescence. Maybe you've heard of this idea of an unbalanced brain, and I don't want to say anything negative about the adolescent brain, but these trajectories are not uh aligned completely. So you have a part of the brain that relates to motivation and impulses and excitement and responds so quickly to it that in order to at that moment to say, this is really not so logical, I shouldn't be doing this because it can have really negative consequences like two minutes, half an hour, let alone down the line over long term, then you really need to activate that part of your brain, prefrontal cortex, to kind of regulate your behavior and say, like, well, this sounds this is really cool, but I shouldn't be doing that. That is quite uh some effort, and for athletes, it's even more difficult because part of your brain that responds to rewards. It's like it's lighting up, it's saying, like, go, go for it. This is really cool. And that's when things get a bit tricky and difficult. That was that you think of like, yeah, I shouldn't be doing that, but it's just it's just really challenging for adolescents, even more than for children or older adults that to show that regulation at that point.
SPEAKER_02Because it's such a developmental period filled with so many changes hormonally, mentally, as you said, and everything in between, including those peer factors, external things like school is changing, college is coming up, we're having to do more homework, testing, and everything in between, it's becoming more intense. So obviously, those changes are then gonna feed into how we interact with them and deal with them. But I love that overview that you gave because it was so in-depth and rich. And I have two questions that feed off of that. So you talked about this prefrontal cortex, and I believe from what I know, it's around 24-25 that it stops growing or developing. I guess it doesn't stop really.
SPEAKER_01Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00So we're we're always changing. Maybe that's a better way to look at it. Our brain is constantly developing, and development can go in different directions across adolescence. So when it comes to the prefrontal cortex, we see more of like a steady developmental line. And at some point, the change becomes slower and slower. That's what like until you go into older age, and then you might see changes in the other direction as well. Wow. Our brain is constantly changing, it's just the speed with which it changes, it is like more salient across childhood and adolescence. And when I talk about the subcortical brain regions, so if I say um, for those of us listening, I'm showing with my hand like you're going uh it's a linear line diagonally, let's say it's increasing. So that's what I say with change. Then you have the subcortical cortex and it's all of a sudden going all the way up, like so it the speed is different. So that makes the subcortical cortex much more sensitive. Okay. And for adolescents, whatever is that that motivates you, that's going to give a really big signal. So and that can change per person, but we just know in general, adolescent peers are very important. Yeah. So when you're in that group of friends and peers, then things have this very big salience for you, and that will influence your motivation. So if you really want to fit in, and that's one of the most important things for you, then whatever is going on at that moment, you will probably respond to things and do things that are gonna increase your, I don't know, maybe your popularity, your connecting with your friends and fitting in and all these things. Whereas, you know, if you would take some time, you would see it maybe differently and say, like, I shouldn't have really done that. You know, but at that moment, your brain is responsing to responding to the reward, and the rewards are often social, so it's responding to social rewards. But you can kind of think of other things where you're not in the peer context, and then I don't know, you're responding to that piece of chocolate, and that that's the old rewarding thing, and you're just like gonna go for it. And if you don't want to do that, you need to kind of regulate and tell yourself, no, I shouldn't be doing that.
SPEAKER_02And during that, not flatlining period, but the period just where the growth is kind of staying in this same region or adulthood per se, as you said, kind of once we not reach a certain age, because it varies for different people, but once we grow older and our brain does develop, not to its full extent, but to a certain level. Is that when we see emotional development kind of also doing the same thing? And that's why we see adults kind of saying that they're more mature and can handle these decision-making situations better. Is it because their brain is more developed? So during that adolescent period, we don't have as much, actually, we don't have as much like capability as adults. And then you said it does regress sometimes with age as well. Can you dive into that a little bit more?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, actually, what we see is that uh uh brain development in the regions that respond to rewards and motivation, but they show a peak. So they kind of like show this increased developmental trajectory, and that's when they become really sensitive. Wow. And in our data, what we see is a the a peak around the age of 15, 16, but you should see it kind of like a rough indication. But more or less middle lessons where you see the peak, and then it kind of subsides. And at the same time, you have the prefrontal cortex that's also developing, and that kind of explains like with increasing age, A, you have the like an increased capacity to be able to regulate your behavior and emotions, and B, the the motivational rewarding response in your brain is not as strong in either. So kind of a bit like less, and then it becomes just easier to regulate yourself.
SPEAKER_02So there's just different factors in our brain that are actually balancing out, which is so cool to think about, especially because people think of the brain sometimes as this one thing. It's just a connected kind of place within side our head that are leading to decisions and our capacity to be able to do things. But in reality, there's so many different components and regions that are actually contributing to the overall structure of ourselves and who we become. And during our adolescent period, sometimes label teenagers and young adults as impulsive. Is this because those different factors are still climbing? Is that impulsivity actually accurate?
SPEAKER_00I guess I wouldn't call it impulsive, but uh that really relates to what I try to explain with this response to rewards. And I guess that's what we see because when you look at behavior, it might seem impulsive in a way. But so if you would ask adolescents, let's say, questions about uh risk taking and say, like, um, what would you do in this situation? Findings show that they do not really differ from adults in terms of what they would they think they would say or do that really shows that they have the capacity to like you know, you you can think and you can reason, but the difference comes in context. So, like sometimes referred to as like hot and cold decision making, being like right in the moment and cold one being like out of that context. So if you would ask them, like, you know, would you uh pass the traffic light when it's red? Like adolescents will also say, like, no, I you know, one shouldn't do that, you know, like, but when it comes to the context at the moment, they show like also in experimental studies, they show that they're more likely to take those risks than children and adults, even though they would say that it's risky and that it doesn't make sense to act in a certain way. So coming back to your question, I wouldn't say they're more impulsive, but it's really about understanding that decision making in the context and what is it about that context that influences the decisions that they make. And I guess this is also important for adolescents to really think about, like when you're making that decision, like what are the things that might be feeding into that? And I guess that's also important for understanding who you are and what's important for you. Like, well, am I really, you know, am I trying to make friends? And that's why I'm acting in this way, or am I want to fit in, but I actually wouldn't want to do this, but I'm doing it to reach a different goal. So if you're aware of those goals, maybe you view the decisions that you make in a different way.
SPEAKER_02And as you said, it kind of differs for every person. You dived into it very briefly, but for every adolescent, the experience of kind of not impulsivity, but making those quick decisions is gonna differ. Is there actual research that shows why some teenagers or adolescents have a bigger capability or a stronger capability to actually make not the right decision, but the better decision than others who kind of act on the things that they might like to do? Is there kind of a difference in the way that their brains are structured or external factors? What or what kind of contributes to one person maybe making the better decision or not as good of a decision?
SPEAKER_00Well, I guess there are many factors that can feed into that. So what we see is like when I say the brain develops in this and this way, that's again a generalization, and the averages that we see, and there's a lot of variation in that as well. So these trajectories can look very different for individuals. And what I'm describing is kind of the average overall view of brain development that we have. And similarly, there can be very many different factors, also depending on your experiences with your peers. So if you've had certain experiences, then you're going to view a situation where you're going to be making decisions in a very different way than someone else who has had different experiences. And all our experiences also feed into how our brain works and how it responds. Yeah. Let alone the fact that there are differences in our tendencies of how much novelty-seeking a person might be, and that can also feed into how sensitive you are to these rewards. And some people might be more socially oriented than others, and that can influence how you make decisions. There can be things related to your self-esteem that can, you know, influence how important it is for you to fit into that group or not. So I guess there are many factors, and there's a lot of individual variation. So there are many factors that feed into the decisions that we make.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And during those situations where adolescents might feel discouraged that they've been making the quote unquote wrong decisions, and that that path is the only one for them, especially when maybe their friends or their peers are making the quote unquote right decisions. How can adolescents get out of that mentality that every choice that they're making is wrong when in reality They might just have to flip a switch inside of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I I would really I would really like young people to think of their decisions in terms of moments where they can learn about how they're growing. So not really good or bad decisions. And I can totally understand that in some situations there can be really negative consequences that relate to the decision that you've made. But again, if you try to understand what were the factors that really led to that, what was influencing my decision in that moment, and now what would I want to be the crucial factor if I were to kind of make that decision again and learn from these aspects. And I guess that's where growth comes from. That's where you can really like see this more like as chances of growing. So not like judging yourself for having made certain decisions, but instead seeing it as a chance to grow, that you can look back on it, reflect. And hopefully, if you really think like I should have, I would have wanted to act differently. I want to be a person that can make these decisions in a different way next time, I would see that as a big plus and not as a negative thing that you should be judging yourself for.
SPEAKER_02And during those moments in time, we really do need to lean into introspection. We've talked about it in a bunch of different episodes before, but just realizing maybe what you're thinking about or what might be influencing you and taking that extra minute or two to just understand what's happening inside of you and leading you to make those decisions or choices in your social interactions or with your parents or whatever it may be, it's gonna really be beneficial to just think and sit with those feelings when even though it might be uncomfortable to do so and doesn't seem like it would actually work. In reality, so many of people like you have said that yes, it does help. And are there kind of simple ways that teenagers or adolescents can actually lead themselves into introspection? Because when thinking about, oh, how am I supposed to just think about my thoughts, it can feel overwhelming or maybe confusing. So are there little things that adolescents can do to try to make their brain think in a different way about who they are?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question. I don't know if I can answer that based on research or or um what we um what we've looked at. One thing that might also help, and adolescents are actually increasingly better in this, is perspective taking. So I mentioned like regulation and kind of trying to um kind of anything that can help you guide your behavior and your emotions. Another thing that increasingly more comes online is the perspective taking skills or capacity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And not only in terms of seeing something from a different perspective, but even like actually this ability to make complex decisions and switch between perspectives like more quickly. So not only looking at something from a different perspective, but kind of going back and forth and like really seeing situations in all their complexity, this capacity also increases across adolescents, which in a way relates to the things that we've talked about. Because at that moment, if you're trying to, like if you make a decision that may seem silly afterwards, you're also thinking about like what would the other person think? What would my friends think? What do other people and you know, adolescents are increasingly better at doing that, which are not like when you're young, you're not like that good of like taking all these different perspectives, and then you can do that like better and better, which can can also be something positive that you can like choose in a way, think of like, okay, but how did that person see that? I wonder how would this person see that? And that can also be a way of not only like focusing on well, what am I doing and how am I thinking? And that can seem very intense. You can try to see something from a different person's perspective, and that can really tell you a lot about your own behavior as well.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. Definitely. And when we're young, we get taught these books or kind of these stories about putting yourself in another person's shoes. In those instances, it usually has to relate to bullying or just treating other people with kindness. But what about treating yourself with kindness? If you put yourself in another person's perspective of how you would want to be treated towards them and opposite, it can really help you think about who you are and how you're gonna want to make those decisions. It may seem like just a topic that we're taught in school or just from our parents when we're really young, but in reality, we can carry it out through our entire adolescence and really factor it into a lot of different components of our lives, including perspective taking, which I'm so happy that you really talked about it because there's so many different kinds of golden rules that we're taught that we sometimes overlook and don't prioritize when in reality the simple idea from when we're young can contribute to such a bigger thing when we're older. So I love the perspective taking and putting yourself in another person's shoes because it is truly so significant to who we want to become and how we want to think about ourselves and others. But I want to before we finish up, I do want to also talk about during those actual moments when the decision making might be happening. Are there certain ways that in those moments in time we can slow down or just kind of not rush to conclusions? Because a lot of the times that fast-paced thinking is what leads us to not making the most beneficial decision on our ends.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe just giving yourself, even if it's like five seconds, like to ask yourself maybe a couple of questions, and this can be a different question that works for everyone, or a different question per contact is would I be doing this if my friends were not here? Would I be doing this if I were alone? Would I encourage my friend to do this? Would I encourage my sibling to do this? Yeah. What advice would I give to someone else? Also, relating a little bit to what you were saying, one thought that might help is what would I like to hear from a friend? And yeah, and that's something that you can tell yourself. Yeah, like if you wanna, if if that feels good hearing from other people, you can start off by telling yourself those kinds of things. Yeah. Or how how will I um how will I think about it tomorrow? Will I like really trying to take a time perspective? Do I really want to do this or am I doing it for someone else? Do I do it not to disappoint someone or not to like make someone just to make someone else happy, or am I doing this because I really want to do this? Little things like this, maybe it's good to kind of have, and I don't I think you cannot think of all these things in that moment, but if definitely um if you could like think about it and have this one question that really seems to like work for you, carry that question with you. And if you just give yourself a two second of a pause and think of that question, if it becomes a habit, maybe that's something that can that can help as well.
SPEAKER_02And it's definitely gonna take time. You're not gonna one day be making decisions so quickly that you can't control them to the next day understanding everything to this intensity. It's gonna take time and effort to try to change your mentality or not just change it, but shift it a little bit. But don't give up. When we don't actually try and keep trying, things aren't gonna carry through. So you have to push through maybe that frustration of making the wrong decision and then the right decision and then making the wrong decision again to eventually actually be consistent. But like everything in life, it's not always gonna be this perfect rainbow. There are gonna be moments in time when maybe you didn't make the right decision in a conversation with your friend, or you chose kind of the wrong path with your parents. But when we think about those and use that introspection, we can learn and we can grow for them. So it's just contributing to all of these different efforts and factors that we really have to try and we have to keep going to be able to reach this other side. So finally, what is one thing that you truly want to share with teenagers, young adults, or adolescents and everything in between so that they can understand what their decision making is, especially when they're feeling frustrated with themselves or with what the situation turned out to be?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, can I say two things? Oh my god, I'm really two things. One point I want to point out is that not not thinking that because I do mention like adolescent brain is growing and the cortex is not there yet, I really want to make sure that it doesn't sound like uh you cannot do certain things because the brain is not like completely developed. It is developing, but there are many ways to train your brain as well. So what we see is that with the, you know, even with uh skills, if you train, then we do see brain activity that can reach the same level as adults show when doing the same task after training. Just to show that our brain is plastic, so like there is there are ways of getting better at it. So um it's not an excuse, oh prefrontal cortex is not there yet. It's just like more difficult in the moment. So those hot moments of decision making, and that's where the challenge is. But like I said, um maybe it's also good to think about um adolescence not as a period of, you know, um, there's so much risk taking and it kind of gives it a bit of a negative edge. So I want to emphasize that it is a very precious period of growth and exploration, and there's a lot of room there to also get influenced by peers and the peer context in a positive way. And we see many examples of this in the world where young people get together and, you know, they stand up for climate change, for example, and you could be doing that because your friend is doing that, and that's influence as well. So influence is not always negative, it's in context and it can be in very positive ways. And maybe it's also good for young people to think about the qualities that make them more sensitive to taking risks and doing something that might seem risky in a way that you shouldn't be doing it or can have negative consequences. But these can also be the same qualities that can lead you to take positive risks. And there are many examples of taking positive risks that you could be standing up for someone in your class who is being bullied. And that takes a lot of courage. That's a really risky situation to standing up for someone. So those people who can, you know, be really risk takers, maybe they can see this as a positive thing and think about like how can I use this quality that I can, you know, I can I can be more viable to to take risks in a positive way or in a way that can help me grow. Just trying to really understand like what is it that feeds into your decision making and using that in a in a positive way because they can really same qualities that can really get you into a in a in a very positive direction and make you grow as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, that was such a beautiful and perspective that we really needed to end this conversation off because it really shows that there is a positive side to everything. Yes, you made the wrong decision, but you can learn from it, you can grow from it. And in the end, you're gonna get on this track of okay, I understand why I'm thinking this way. I understand how I can change my perspective and everything in between. So thank you so much for closing our episode out with that. And Dirac Dr. Garolo, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation. Your insights really help bring clarity to something that can feel frustrating and disappointing, especially when we don't fully understand why we make certain decisions in the moment.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02And to everyone listening, making decisions under pressure isn't easy. And during the teenage years, there are so many factors influencing how you think and act. Emotions, social dynamics, and even how your brain is developing all contributes to the end-all way that you are going to interact with people and the decisions that you're making. So if you've ever had a question about a choice that you've made, try to approach it with curiosity instead of judgment. Those moments are part of learning how to understand yourself and the situations around you more clearly. So don't be disappointed when you think that you made the wrong decision. Because in reality, you can grow from them and learn from them. And that's the better part of the whole story. So thank you so much for being a part of this episode of Growing Forward. I'm really glad that you were here for these conversations as we continue to grow. And I hope that you join us again next week for another one. Until next time, this is Sadie Son of Born Maliki, signing off with loads of positivity, as always. Thank you.