Beautiful Brain by David Dobbs Analysis Essay

The author David Dobbs of “Beautiful Brains,” uses his views as a parent to explore the event of his teenage son speeding over 113 miles per hour. He learned of this event when his son called him from the police station after getting pulled over. Though his son was apologetic about his speedy adventure, it did not undo the action at hand. He also approached the question that has been on many people's minds, why do teenagers act this way. Dobbs reasoned that adults are better at resisting urges compared to teens. It is also mentioned that the brain does not develop until later in adolescence. This article is strongly influenced by David Dobbs’ ideas of being a parent to teenagers. He notes that teenagers are “moody, impulsive, and maddening” (Dobbs 1). This idea gives the reader his opinions of teenagers. But the reason for their actions is that during adolescence, the human brain is adaptive. Risks are weighted differently, which causes them to act more impulsively. 

Beatriz Luna’s findings were made by using imaging to study teens, adults, and kid’s impulse control. From this eyes-only video game type testing, they learned that kids have little to no impulse control while teens could score very close to adults. The findings brought up in the article affects psychology by improving our understanding of impulse control. This helps us get a grasp on why kids and teens act the way they do. Laurence Steinberg’s findings of how teens weigh risks differently than adults do revolutionize not only my thoughts but the ones of the author. Teenagers actually weigh rewards heavier than adults do and they overestimate risks. Which causes their actions to seem risky and irrational to the adults due to how they weigh risks over reward. Steinberg provides an experiment where a teen and adult play the same video game with no one in the room versus having their friends in the room. It was seen that when the teen was in a room with his friends they seemed to act more impulsively than when in a room by themselves. It was infrared that the reason the teen acted differently was to impress his friends instead of being seen as safe or boring. Steinberg’s findings from this article affect psychology by giving people more of a grasp on how teens weigh risks very differently than adults. 

 The author attributes teenage behavior to sensation seeking. He said that impulsivity is seen to grow from ages 10 and peak at 15. He also states that sensory seeking is not always dangerous it can also lead to positive outcomes. The author uses the research of Jay Gieeld, a teen brain teacher, to defend his attribution of teen behavior. Jay Gieeld studies the actions of teens to try and understand their behavior. This change in risk and reward can be seen in the experiments done in the lab as well as in real life. Teens have a higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse during this time and their risk of premature death because of accidents is significantly higher than adults. This can be attributed to the risk and reward differences that teens and adults have due to the decisions teens make that lead to bad outcomes. 

Within the seven Psychological perspectives, this article by David Dobbs has a behavioral perspective. The perspective is behavioral because the article attempts to answer the question of why teens act the way they do. David dives deep into his experiences and the psychological background into adolescence. To explain why teenagers act so impulsively and tend to do more actions can be seen as risky. As it covers the actions and behaviors of teenagers the most fitting Psychological perspective is behavioral. But the author seems to check the actions all up to the adolescent’s brain weighing risk differently and being adaptive in order to expand further into adulthood. 

I believe the author had a good idea about where the risky teen behavior came from, as that being how teens weigh risk differently and their brains are adaptive. This can be linked with the idea that this neuroplasticity causes the teenager to prepare to leave the home and become a functional adult. But also comes the risk that teenagers die of accidents in higher amounts than adults due to how they weigh risks. But honestly, I believe he could have presented the information better as well as given more in-depth explanations that are not just on the surface. David Dobbs did an okay job of explaining why teens act the way they do but due to the overall adaptive and changing idea of psychology that differ from person to person the information in this article might be expanded by new discoveries. So overall I agree with the ideas David Dobbs presented in this article about teen behavior.