“All Gas and No Brakes!”: Helpful Metaphor or Harmful Stereotype?

Even the more straightforward language of teen brain neuroscience can seem impenetrable to the uninitiated, and it is unsurprising efforts are made to translate it for professionals, policy makers, and the general public into something more accessible. One particular effort—apparently attractive to neuroscientists and psychologists for use among themselves as well—likens adolescents, or sometimes more specifically their brains, metaphorically to features of motor vehicles and/or the way they are driven. In his keynote address to a major symposium in 2003, Ronald Dahl (2004) acknowledged the Pittsburgh ADAPT Research Network had used the metaphor a great deal, and he and colleague Laurence Steinberg appear (correctly or not) to serve as its most regularly cited sources. Steinberg’s own academic writing typically acknowledges the speculative status of both science and metaphor, as in the following:

The language of interviews and secondary citations, nevertheless, often delivers something less explicitly hypothetical; for example, the previous year a Time magazine article stated:

Brakes (underused/faulty/lacking) also feature frequently, as in neuroscientist Charles Nelson’s explanation for ABC News linking new brain data with existing notions of hormonal change:

For those concerned still-declining puberty onset is widening further the gap between timelines for physical/sexual and cognitive/emotional maturity, the metaphor seems to hold particular utility: If hormones are understood as having always provided the gas, “developmental mismatch” now turbocharges the engine. Dahl explained the mental health risks of this growing problem thus:

The following extracts, collected via an online search using words and phrases associated with this essay’s title, provide an indication of the metaphor’s subsequent penetration of discursive understandings of young people in a variety of genres and contexts. All sources cited were accessible at time of writing (late 2010). In some cases authors continue to refer to specific researchers, as in this U.S. news item making links between poor impulse control and criminal offending:

Even when not supplying listed references this practice does at least give the critical reader key names to follow up; however, it is equally if not more common to find the metaphor authoritatively employed with reference neither to identifiable sources nor its hypothetical status, suggesting to readers its established validity as a conceptual tool. For example, physician David Walsh, author of a bestselling parenting text, simply explains in an ABC News article: “If we were to compare the teenage brain to an automobile, it’s as if the gas pedal is to the floor, and there are no brakes” (Murphy & Allen, 2006, para. 11), and recent guidelines for mentors working with Adventist youth advise:

Such imagery contributes in similar fashion to psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg’s account of the mismatch problem for the Australian news media, and U.S. psychologist Doug Gentile’s online interview discussing addictive gaming behavior:

Apparently the metaphor should be especially helpful to educators. In the United States, for example, journalist Richard Monastersky (2007) spread the word to readers of The Chronicle of Higher Education that “The teenage brain, in essence, is a turbocharged car with a set of brakes under construction” (p. A14), while teacher educator Pat Wolfe notes in a recent paper on her website:

Government information for Australian teachers outlines what to expect when dealing with physically maturing students without PFCs to match: “Young people are more likely to engage in risky behaviours during this time. Ronald E Dahl, from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre describes it as being ‘. . . like turbocharging an engine without a skilled driver’” (NSW Department of Education & Training, 2006, para. 12). In advice for teachers, and as consultant for a recent Australian television documentary series, psychologist Andrew Fuller discards Giedd’s oft-repeated mantra of the adolescent brain as a “work in progress” in favor of his own “closed for construction” to explain:

And as psychologist Aaron White advised in a Canadian teachers’ journal: “Because the frontal lobes are involved in controlling impulses and making good decisions, adolescents often fail to fully consider the consequences of their actions until it’s too late. They are all gas and no brakes!” (White, 2005, p. 6).

In the mid-1990s, in conjunction with launch of its Publication Manual (4th ed.), the American Psychological Association also published a paper in the American Psychologist discussing the epistemological objectives of “APA style.” Direct quotation of sources will be unnecessary and use of colorful metaphors rare, the authors explained, in a disciplinary genre that deliberately adopts “an uncomplicated view of the role that language plays in communication” to align its scholarship with the sciences and distance it from the humanities (Madigan, Johnson, & Linton, 1995, p. 433). However, the supposed objective neutrality and “realism” of scientific writing was elsewhere already under serious interrogation (e.g., Gentner, 1982; Gould, 1981), alongside a growing appreciation of the meaning-making power of language—argued perhaps most persuasively in Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, first published in 1980:

In this sense, they suggested, metaphors can be self-fulfilling prophecies—and their potential in this regard may in fact be most compelling in societies according high status to scientific knowledge (p. 160):

Even within psychology these matters were already under discussion. Leary (1990) had eloquently argued the importance of recognizing the extent to which culturally salient and popular metaphors had provided much of the “persuasiveness” of 20th-century psychology and that overlooking this reality promoted what he called “hardening of the categories” and “various sorts of myths and cults—such as the myth of objectivity and its associated cult of empiricism—that have characterized so much of twentieth-century thought” (p. 3). Gergen (1990) had likewise examined the influence of psychological metaphors in legitimating or rationalizing social positioning and social orders, especially when there was ongoing uncertainty in existing public discourse. Both early and more recent analyses acknowledge that “constructing something in terms of something else results in a particular view of the ‘something’ in question, often including specific attitudes and evaluations” (Semino, 2008, p. 32). Seldom impartial, therefore, developmental metaphors have significant real-life consequences:

When they come to represent the “commonsense” view of things, especially across a range of authorities and genres, they may soon seem less metaphorical and more “natural” and militate against introduction and acceptance of alternative understandings (Goatly, 2007; Sarbin, 1990; Semino, 2008).

Recently in the American Psychologist Kurt Fischer and colleagues took Laurence Steinberg and colleagues to task for use of “narrow, biased assessments,” which they alleged were producing oversimplified research accounts of adolescents’ cognitive and psychosocial (im)maturity. Steinberg in turn accused Fischer of refusing to address the reality that scientists interested in informing policy discussions have a responsibility to “boil down” developmental complexities into accessible data-informed messages (Fischer, Stein, & Heikkinen, 2009; Steinberg, Cauffman, Woolard, Graham, & Banich, 2009a-b). The prominence accorded this debate in the APA’s flagship journal is in contrast with lack of concern (so far as I am aware at time of writing) with the oversimplification and overgeneralization characteristic of “all gas no brakes.” Is psychologists’ (apparently discouraged) use of colorful metaphor assumed not to require the same critique? If problems were to be identified, would defendants likewise make a case for dismissing them on grounds of the imagery’s apparent utility?

There is arguably a clear parallel between the internally directed gaze that prompted Hall’s metaphor and current preoccupations with brain reconstruction that energized emergence of “all gas no brakes.” His legacy in its new mechanical/vehicular guise invites us once again to look inward for an understanding of youth—precipitously inhabiting physically and sexually mature bodies for a decade or more before their brains “catch up” (Gluckman & Hanson, 2006; Herman-Giddens, 2007)—and their problems. “Broken moorings” are replaced by souped-up engines, accelerator pedals to the floor, and plenty of “gas” representing surfeits of hormones and the overactive or uninhibited influence of “primitive” regions of the brain. There is no (rational/risk-averse) “skilled driver” able to steer this powerful machine and make successful and appropriate (according to adult criteria at least) use of its substantial assets. Upskilling the driver does not present as a possible solution, since poor/weak brakes (the immature PFC)—or no brakes at all—cannot be fixed. Inevitable risk taking and hazardous unpredictability thus constitute the default teenage condition, crashes of one kind or another are unavoidable, and best hopes for safety are pinned on extended denial of a “license” (raising the legal age for a variety of behaviors) or other braking mechanisms supplied by vigilant adults. Of course, some elements of this imagery were already present in most mid- to late-20th-century Western psychological texts on teenagers—Offer and Schonert-Reichl (1992), for example, had claimed research to be already “disabled” by strongly held beliefs that the typical adolescent is “out of control . . . and incapable of rational thought” (p. 1003). But why is it flourishing now, as greater celebration of diversity (or intrusive “political correctness,” depending on your point of view) operates to eliminate many other manifestations of prejudicial thinking within developmental discourse?

Decisions to adopt metaphorical concepts to explain human development and behavior are related not merely to the emergence of new “facts” but to the social contexts that granted these facts importance and within which they will be disseminated. In their classic paper examining adolescent studies published during four periods spanning nearly a century, for example, Enright and colleagues demonstrated how discourses of immaturity/instability and competence were differently privileged during times of differing economic and political conditions (Enright, Levy, Harris, & Lapsley, 1987). If “all gas no brakes” prospers for reasons beyond functioning as scientific shorthand, Enright et al.’s analysis clearly advises that the typical peacetime and economically uncertain conditions currently prevailing in Western countries would (less or more knowingly) strongly encourage theoretical emphasis on adolescents’ immaturity and incompetence over their ability to handle “adult” responsibilities. Following Danziger (1990)—and without necessarily intending to imply that certain individuals or groups might not have the best interests of adolescents at heart—there is arguably little question that the main priority for practical action the metaphor calls forth is greater adult surveillance and control of adolescent behavior. As Laurence Steinberg (2007) put it, “Some things just take time to develop, and, like it or not, mature judgment is probably one of them.” This means stronger laws and stronger parental control “to protect teens from themselves” (p. 58; Weaver, 2007, para. 6), and, as he further explained for USA Today, accepting that many popular and possibly preferred strategies are doomed to fail:

Vigorously opposing the rationale of protectionism, Robert Epstein has for some years presented an articulate case against this trend to greater regulation of teenagers’ behavior. Arguing that “the more restrictions you place on people who consider themselves to be autonomous and competent, the angrier and less manageable they become” (Epstein, 2010, p. 144), he questions why American teens appear typically subjected to far more behavioral limitations in their daily lives than adults in maximally controlled environments like prisons. Epstein interestingly asserts even Hall himself “knew that treating teens as ‘mere children’ was a grave mistake” and would have disapproved of the lack of dignity accorded adolescents in what he labels the current climate of their “infantilization” (p. 125). More than three decades earlier controversial educator John Holt had not dissimilarly compared modern childhood to prison confinement; his still-uncomfortable observation on “useless” children, if now extended chronologically, adding another perspective on why “all gas no brakes” apparently provokes little condemnation—namely, that many adults these days do not actually like teenagers very much and (with assistance from the news media) are attracted rather than repelled by the meaning making of marginalizing language (see, for example, Squires, 2008). If storyings of fear and threat win out, Epstein’s admittedly provocative solutions—radically less control coupled with “serious doses of real responsibility” (p. 120)—will predictably continue to invite more resistance than support.

Then there is the question of whether human brains ever become “capable of avoiding risky behavior.” Arguably, subjecting adults’ practices to the same tireless, in-depth research scrutiny as teenagers’ would soon answer it; in the meantime, we should examine this enthusiasm for adolescent–adult, immature–mature binaries at a time when such distinctions have been increasingly problematized elsewhere in the developmental literature (e.g., Arnett, 2004; Côté, 2000). Perhaps it is these very challenges to established status positionings in the lifespan that attract adults to imagery offering to distinguish and distance them cognitively and emotionally from youth (even as they may desire physical youthfulness). Or perhaps attention should be more urgently directed at the zealous developmentalism of much contemporary expert advice—adamant that “risky” adolescent habits and experiences have irreversible implications for later physical, mental, and social health—that increasingly persuades parents dire outcomes are only avoided by diligent monitoring of both scientific findings and teenage children. Or perhaps, as Mike Males (2010) concludes from his analysis of U.S. debates around sex education, “adults love to call teenagers stupid” (p. 202) because it draws attention away from the inadequacies of adults’ performance in teenagers’ lives and from the more general failure of research into “adolescent risk taking” to consider the impact of external (especially socioeconomic) factors on behavior and behavioral consequences (Males, 2009).

Although a constructionist perspective on the nature of adolescence should not have total disregard for the role of biological factors in proscribing and shaping individual accomplishments (Sercombe, 2010), it does require any talk of adolescence as a time of storm and stress avoids implying it is a period characterized only by turmoil (Arnett, 1999) and it cannot but oppose a reinscribing of “out of control” in language more essentialist than even Hall would likely have approved. If we assume the way we talk about young people helps establish the conditions for how we treat them, and, if Lakoff and Johnson are correct, that metaphors originating from hard science are most likely to be conferred the authority of absolute truth, then “all gas no brakes” must be taken seriously.

This potent metaphor draws strength from more sources than the authority of developmental science, of course. Nevertheless, it is particularly worrying to place its endorsement by teen brain researchers alongside recent rhetoric from these scientists, who are looking forward to “the next decade of progress in understanding this unique and inspiring period of the lifespan” (Luciana, 2010, p. 5). Given the distinctly retrograde rather than progressive language their participants thus far seem to have “inspired,” does this mean we are in for another ten years of revelations and quasihumorous advice about teens’ unique incompetence? It can only be hoped that as the methodological and interpretive sophistication of this research increases its practitioners will choose to embrace the (admittedly formidable) task of producing an alternative metaphorical mindset—one emphasizing, facilitating, and celebrating capability and responsibility rather than requiring adolescents to live with adultist understandings that indiscriminately and unconditionally underestimate and undervalue them.