sensations and arousal in the bedroom. Sensation-seekers have
more permissive attitudes toward sex and more varied types of
sexual experiences with more partners.^20 Sensation-seeking indivi-
duals may also seek more intense sexual situations and unplanned
encounters.^21
Rick Hoyle and his colleagues Michele Fejfer and Joshua
Miller reviewed all the studies relating to major personality traits
and sexual risk factors.^22 Sexual risk-taking was defined by number
of partners, having unprotected sex, and high-risk sexual encoun-
ters such as having sex with a stranger. Sensation-seeking is corre-
lated with all three. In fact, when you take into account all types of
personality traits, sensation-seeking may be the best way to predict
risky sexual encounters.
For example, in the young adult population, high sensation-
seekers were more likely to have had sex, intended to have sex in
the near future, had unwanted sex under pressure, and were more
likely to have had unwanted sex when drunk.
However, it isn’t only their attraction to ludic love that may
make it difficult for some HSSs to maintain long-term relationships.
It turns out that, for all their gifts, some high sensation-seekers may
struggle with a core concept in relating with other people – emo-
tional intelligence.The Challenge of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is your ability to perceive and regulate emo-
tions. It helps us to be socially skilled. Peter Salovey and John Mayer
coined the term in the 1990s to convey “a form of social intelligence
that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings
and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this infor-
mation to guide one’s thinking and action.” In one study people
who were good at perceiving emotions accurately were able to
respond more quickly to shifts in social environments like knowing
when they’ve taken a joke too far.^23 Later, Daniel Goleman built on
the work of Salovey and Mayer. He suggested that cognitive intelli-
gence alone wasn’t enough for success but that emotional intelli-
gence was important as well.^24
There are two important components of emotional intel-
ligence: intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. Let’s start
with the first one. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to
understand your own emotions and to be able to alter those105 / The Relationships of High Sensation-SeekersDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:21:35, subject to the Cambridge