AGE AND GENDER PECULIARITIES OF HUMAN PREDISPOSITION TO RISK BEHAVIOR

Abstract.In modern conditions of life, characterized by the uncertainty of the possible consequences of a particular decision, the analysis of the endogenous factors initiating risk behavior of a person is relevant. At the same time, adolescence should be singled out as the most critical in terms of situational risks of provocation of deviant behavior.Important from the point of view of scientific and practical importance, is the study of the gender specificity of the formation of human inclination to risky behavior. The purpose of the study is to identify the age and sex characteristics of a person's predisposition to risky behavior.As a result of the research performed, it was determined that regardless of gender, in the period from 14 to 19 years old, the tendency of a person to take risky behavior is actualized, manifesting as much as possible at the age of 16-17. For both boys and girls, increased behavioral risks are statistically significantly positively correlated with adventurism, extraversion, excitability and cyclodexuality, which confirms traditional psychological ideas about the factors initiating risk-taking behavior. Separate psychotype indicators, which reinforce risk appetite, are characteristic only for boys or girls. The most significant in this regard are the direct correlation of the propensity to risk with neuroticism in boys and demonstrativeness in girls, against the background of the absence of similar connections in persons of the opposite sex.At the same time, if demonstrativeness, as the initiating factor of risk behavior, is a characteristic gender characteristic of women, then neuroticism is clearly not in line with traditional ideas about the propensity to risk of males. In this case, there is a gender inversion of the male psychotype in terms of neuroticism, which can be used as a marker of men's tendency to take risky behavior. Thus, as a result of the studies performed, the age and sex characteristics of the indicators of a person's propensity for risky behavior were specified.