Sensation seeking: why some people need novelty and adrenaline to feel alive

In the early 1960s the psychologist Marvin Zuckerman ran sensory deprivation experiments. Volunteers lay in dark, quiet rooms with almost nothing to see, hear or touch. Some people coped with hours of it calmly. Others found it hard to bear. Zuckerman wanted to know why people differ so much in how much stimulation they need, and that question led him to the idea of sensation seeking.

He described it as a need for varied, new, complex and intense experiences, together with a willingness to accept some risk to get them. In 1964 he published the first Sensation Seeking Scale, and he kept refining it for decades.

Four ways to seek sensations

Zuckerman's best-known version, Form V from 1978, splits the trait into four parts:

• Thrill and adventure seeking: an interest in fast, physical and somewhat risky activities such as climbing or diving.
• Experience seeking: looking for new experiences through travel, music, art or an unusual way of life.
• Disinhibition: seeking excitement in social settings, such as parties.
• Boredom susceptibility: a low tolerance for routine, repetition and predictable people.

In 2002 Rick Hoyle and colleagues published a brief version with eight items, two for each part, for use in large surveys.

What our test asks

Our Sensation Seeking Test has 10 statements that we wrote ourselves, based on Zuckerman's work. It is a self-reflection tool, not one of the validated scales from the research, and it gives one overall score. You answer on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

Examples: "I am drawn to sports or activities that give a strong shot of adrenaline." and "I get bored quickly when the days all look the same." Two statements describe the opposite, such as "I prefer a quiet evening at home to heading out into the unknown." Those two are scored in reverse. One statement is about bolder moments: "I sometimes do slightly crazy things just to feel alive."

Risk as the price of intensity

People often equate sensation seeking with recklessness. Zuckerman argued that high scorers do not seek danger for its own sake. They want the intensity, and they are willing to pay for it with some risk. Many channel the trait into fairly safe outlets: travel, new food, demanding sports with good equipment and training.

The trait is also different from impulsivity, although the two often appear together. In 2008 Laurence Steinberg and colleagues found that sensation seeking rose between about 10 and 15 years of age and then declined, while impulsivity fell steadily from late childhood on. You can love new experiences and still plan them carefully. One statement in our test, about making decisions on the spur of the moment, touches on impulsivity, so a high score can mean a bit of both.

How to read your score

A high score suggests you get bored with routine and feel at your best when something is new or intense. That can suit jobs with variety, travel or fast decisions, and it can make long, repetitive tasks hard. A low score suggests you prefer calm and predictability. Neither end is better, and many people sit in the middle.

If a high score comes with choices you later regret, such as driving too fast or spending money you do not have, the issue may be impulse control more than the need for novelty.

To see whether that is the case, try the impulsivity test (BIS). If your interest in new things is more about ideas than adrenaline, the curiosity test may describe you better.