Considerations of Fairness in the Adolescent Brain

Adolescents experience a marked change in their evaluation of fairness, trust, and reciprocity that leads to more altruistic behavior and tendencies that are oriented toward others. In this article, I highlight advances in brain imaging research to focus on how adolescents make social decisions. Using the Ultimatum Game and the Trust Game as examples, I show that adolescents are relatively focused on the self in early adolescence, with impulse control and perspective taking increasing in later adolescence and early adulthood. These changes are accompanied by a shift in the relative contribution of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region important for self-referential processing, to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporal-parietal junction, regions important for controlling selfish impulses and perspective taking. This shift in balance may tip adolescents toward more self-oriented choices in early adolescence and allow them to consider consequences for others in later adolescence.