Developmental exposure to the physical and social world and responses to risk among college students from four cultural contexts

What are the psychological implications of developmental exposure to the physical and social environment of one's community, with its threats and rewards? The cultural shaping of enacted autonomy-or self-reliance in an environment that includes real and perceived threats-has largely been overlooked despite historical changes in this domain. Responses to risk are thought to depend on experience-dependent calibration in teens and young adults. It is unknown whether developmental exposure to enacted autonomy is associated with emotional responses to risk in emerging adults. This questionnaire-based study compared college students from four countries thought to differ in developmental exposure of children to their communities (USA, n = 258, Canada, n = 211, Türkiye, n = 163 and Russia, n = 104). Enacted autonomy was assessed via students' retrospective reports of meeting enacted autonomy milestones (e.g., walking to school by themselves) while growing up. Responses to risk were assessed by: (1) a scale measuring perceived safety of the area where students currently live; and (2) descriptions of recent risky events in the students' lives and their emotional reactions to them. Russian students reported meeting enacted autonomy milestones earlier and Canadian students later, with the US and Türkiye in between. Meeting autonomy milestones later in one's childhood was associated with the tendency to perceive one's college-age environment as less safe and experience less intense positive affect in risky situations. It may be important for researchers studying the cultural shaping of emotions and risk to consider the role of exposure to the physical and social world.