The Effect Of Peer Selection On Risk-Taking Behavior Of College Students With Different Attachment Styles And Its Neural Mechanism

College students in the late adolescence period are more capable of risk-taking behavior in physiological and environmental conditions,less supervised by adults,have more opportunities to contact risky behavior,and show more risk-taking behavior in real life.As adolescents enter new environments such as college in the later stage,the need to establish new peer networks makes peer selection have an important impact on college students’ risk-taking behavior.According to the dual-system model,the incoordination of the development of the social-emotional system and the cognitive control system leads to individuals being more susceptible to the social-emotional system with increased activation during adolescence,and on the one hand,they are more sensitive to reward information and risk-taking behavior,and on the other hand,they are more susceptible to risk-taking behavior influenced by peers.There has been no consistent conclusion on the impact of peer selection on college students’ risk-taking behavior,with some studies finding that college students are susceptible to peer selection in risk-taking behavior,and others finding that college students choose companion choice according to risk situations in risk-taking behavior.The neural mechanisms of peer selection affecting college students’ risk-taking behavior mainly include reward-processing-related brain regions,risk processing-related brain regions,and cognitive control-related brain regions.The researchers believe that the reason for the differences in the results may be due to differences in internal social motivation.Attachment style represents the social communication mode of individuals,and individuals with different attachment styles have different social motivations,emotional regulation strategies,and different processing of social information,which may be an important factor to explain the difference in the influence of peer choice on college students’ risk-taking behavior.Studies have found that individuals with secure attachment are able to process information with an open mind;Individuals with anxious attachment crave acceptance and recognition from peers,are more susceptible to peer influence,and are more sensitive to reward information;Individuals with avoidant attachment need to maintain emotional distance from others,pay less attention to peer information,and are less influenced by peers.In addition,the early adverse attachment experience of the individual will affect the social information processing mode of the individual in adolescence,increase the individual’s sensitivity to reward information,and weaken the sensitivity to risk information.Therefore,this study suggests that individual attachment style may regulate the inconsistent influence of peer selection on college students’ risk-taking behavior,and attempts to explore the neural mechanism of risk-taking behavior in individuals with different attachment styles under companion selection conditions.In order to verify the above hypothesis,this study combines the dual-system model to explore the individual differences in the influence of peer selection on college students’ risk-taking behavior,and the study aims to prove the moderating role of attachment style in the influence of peer choice on college students’ risk-taking behavior.Firstly,the influence of peer selection on college students’ risk-taking behavior was explored,and the moderating effect of attachment style in it was proved,and then the mechanism of attachment style moderation was further explored on this basis.This study adopts the lottery choice paradigm with peer selection,combined with eye movement and functional magnetic resonance technology,to explore the influence of peer selection on the risk-taking behavior of college students with different attachment styles and the neural mechanism.This study includes two experiments,the first experiment adopts the two-factor mixed design of 3(attachment style: secure attachment/anxious attachment/avoidant attachment)× 4(peer choice: contradictory choice/risky choice/no choice/safe choice),and recruits participants with three attachment styles to complete the lottery selection task with peer choice,and combines eye tracking technology to investigate the moderating effect of attachment style on the risk-taking behavior of college students.The results showed that peer selection increased the imitation behavior in the risk-taking behavior of college students,and compared with the participants with secure attachment,the participants with anxious attachment had a higher proportion of fixation time and number of fixation times for companion selection information,performed more risk-taking behavior under the condition of no choice,and tended to make consistent choices with peers when presenting companion choices.Different peer selection conditions had no significant effect on the risk-taking behavior of avoidantly attached individuals.On the basis of Experiment 1,the two-factor hybrid design of 2(attachment style: secure attachment/anxious attachment)×and 3(companion choice: risky choice/no choice/safe choice)was used to recruit participants with secure and anxious attachment to complete the same lottery selection task,and combined with f MRI technology,the neural mechanism of attachment style modulation peer choice affecting college students’ risktaking behavior was further investigated.The results showed that the participants with anxious attachment in the risk-taking behavior task showed higher activation in brain regions such as the orbitofrontal cortex,bilateral insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex under the risk-taking selection condition.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Peer selection increases the imitation behavior in college students’ risk-taking behavior,in which college students tend to be consistent with the safety or risk-taking choices of their peers.(2)Attachment style adjusted the influence of peer selection on college students’ risk-taking behavior,and individuals with anxious attachment paid more attention to peer information in risktaking behavior,and were more likely to be influenced by peer choice to take risks or consistent behavior with peers.(3)Attachment style may regulate the collaborative work of the two-system model,compared with individuals with secure attachment,individuals with anxious attachment show higher activation of reward processing brain regions,risk processing brain regions and cognitive control related brain regions when performing risky behaviors,show high sensitivity to reward information and risk information and higher cognitive control,and may have control of behavior based on "high risk and high return" information processing results.In this study,attachment style was introduced as a moderator of peer selection affecting college students’ risk-taking behavior,and the behavioral performance and neural mechanism of risk-taking tasks performed by college students with different attachment styles under peer selection conditions were explored with the help of eye tracking technology and functional magnetic resonance imaging according to the dualsystem model.From the perspective of attachment style,this paper enriches the research on the influence of peers on individual differences in risk-taking behavior,and also provides a new perspective for understanding the synergy between social-emotional system and cognitive control system in the dual-system model from the perspective of attachment,and finally,it also provides ideas for the intervention of negative risk-taking behavior of college students from the perspective of attachment style.