On Monday evening, Deborah Schechter, a visiting professor at Binghamton University, delivered a talk about developmental factors that lead young people toward risk-taking behavior.

The talk was organized by David Wilson, director of the evolutionary studies speaker series and a BU professor of the anthropology and biology departments. It focused on Schechter’s work, which applies life history theory to a Native American community located in far eastern Maine.

According to Schechter, life history theory functions to provide an explanation for the development of internalized environmental insecurity. The idea is that insecurity can stem from different stressors young people experience, such as frequent changes in living situations, economic uncertainty and poor familial relationships. When internalizing this environment, young people may turn to risk-taking behavior for short-term relief.

To measure this, Schechter monitored the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in individuals. Those with higher cortisol levels were more likely to be experiencing stress and partake in risky behavior.

“What research in this area shows is that for individuals that are experiencing economic stress, they have higher cortisol levels,” Schechter said. “For individuals who are experiencing family conflict, they have high cortisol levels. And also, individuals who show insecure attachment in a protective relationship also tend to have high cortisol levels.”

Schechter’s research focused on the Passamaquoddy tribe located in Maine. She noted that the reason for choosing them was that Native American communities are disproportionately vulnerable to high-risk behaviors after decades of marginalization.

“The reason that I became interested in working with Native Americans in the first place is that Native Americans, taken as a group, are much more vulnerable to many different kinds of risk-taking behaviors, starting with drug and alcohol use, dropping out of school — even things like wearing seatbelts, suicide,” Schechter said. “All these things disproportionately affect this population.”

Speaking to about 100 Passamaquoddy children between the ages of 10 and 19, Schechter asked about their home lives and their future plans. The interview acted as a stressor, with Schechter measuring the children’s levels of cortisol in a saliva sample both before and after the interview to see how external factors were influencing them.

Schechter found that Native American children who were more involved with their traditional community — children who participated in events like a reservation-wide potluck and traditional drumming — had lower levels of cortisol and were less likely to participate in risk-taking behavior.

Wilson noted that even though Schechter was a new professor to BU, he felt her work was compelling enough that he would have asked her to speak to his students no matter the circumstance.

“I would have paid for her airline ticket to come from the University of Washington, where she got her degree,” Wilson said. “So we were lucky to be able to have her so available to us.”

One of Wilson’s students, Kelly Nunziata, a senior majoring in environmental studies, said she felt that Schechter’s research connected well with the reasons she finds work being done in the evolutionary studies program so interesting.

“Her approach to why life histories are affecting what you’re doing now, that idea could be used on a grander scale not only with people, but with ecosystems, and how kind of anything develops,” Nunziata said. “Which is you have to look at where it came from to figure out where it’s going, and how you could change to make it go a different way.”