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The popular notion that teens often view themselves as “invincible” is being challenged by new research out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. NET News talks with Tara Warner, a professor of Sociology and author of a study that’s showing us some young people have very grave concerns about their futures, and much of it comes down to race.
NET NEWS: Tara, with this study you paid particular mind to how these teens view their mortality. What kind of effect can that have on a teen’s attitude day-to-day?
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TARA WARNER: “We know that those pessimistic attitudes are linked to a number of risky behaviors. If you're kind of approaching the world thinking that you don't have much to lose, then what's to stop you from engaging in problem and risk behaviors? But what we discovered was that there really hadn't been much of an investigation into what leads to those negative attitudes in the first place. And more importantly, are there differences in those attitudes across racial, ethnic, an immigrant groups. That's what we sought to tackle in this study- to unpack and explore those potential differences in survival expectations across those groups.”
NET NEWS: And so you identify the divide between the groups, but the question in anyone’s mind who hears that is- why?
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TARA WARNER: “The established correlates are kind of risk factors for these negative attitudes or things like exposure to violence, growing up in a poor neighborhood; being exposed to numerous structural and family disadvantages. It was also things like discrimination and contact with law enforcement and those risk factors themselves are distributed differently across racial and ethnic lines. We kind of expected that some of that might be driving those racial differences in attitudes.”
Tara Warner is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. (courtesy photo)
NET NEWS: These are topics we’ve been exposed to a lot lately by the media. Did that cross your mind while you and your colleagues were studying this?
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TARA WARNER: “It is kind of characteristic of our culture, I think. Things like racism and discrimination are long established in our culture and it makes sense that they are continuing to potentially exert an effect. The U.S. is highly segregated. We've got high poverty rates and these things minorities, in particular, experience. So it seems reasonable that some of those risk factors might translate into these compromised expectations about future even among young people.”
NET NEWS: You also discovered differences between teens who were born in the US versus those that immigrated here. Tell us about that.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TARA WARNER: “Yeah, and even some differences across Hispanic ethnicities so. We found, for instance, Mexican youth were really pessimistic about their survival, whereas Cuban youth had much more positive attitudes. We can attribute some of that to differences in family and structural poverty that those youth differentially encounter.”
NET NEWS: What do you think we can take away from this research?
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TARA WARNER: “It's kind of a depressing study so you want to know, ‘How can I use this to make the world a better place?’ I think that the findings serve a few purposes. One is they really contribute to continued research on the link between expectations and behavior and kind of push researchers to perhaps be attuned to these more nuanced, racial and ethnic differences. More generally, I think it really speaks to the need for doing whatever we can to increase these attitudes - be targeted in these kind of intervention and prevention strategies that might help give youth something to look forward to. You know, opportunities to hope for, to work for, to strive for. I think this research is showing that something like that is definitely needed.”