throughout the day. “I’ll run out of gas on the way to work.” “I’ll
forget my friend’s birthday next week.” “They’ll run out of bananas
at the grocery store.” You get the idea. They captured the rambling
flow of worry that many of us subject ourselves to each day. Then
the researchers followed up. Did they get to work on time, remem-
ber their friend’s birthday, did they have bananas? A stunning
85 percent of the concerns never came to pass. And for the concerns
that did, the participants reported that they handled them much
better than they anticipated.^11 Nevertheless, most of us get stuck in
our negative ruminations, a sort of recreational anxiety and self-
doubt of our ability to handle what life might throw our way.
High sensation-seekers are different. During their high sen-
sation activities most handle the task in the moment without too
much analysis. The rest of us tend to overanalyze situations that
never arise and not act on the ones that do. Not such a great
combo. We’d like to think we would act if the situation demanded
it. Instead many of us stand passively by hoping someone else will.
This is called “the bystander effect.” Ithas been demonstratedrepeat-
edly that in dangerous situations – in situations where someone is
getting hurt or worse – the more people watching a crime, the less
likely any of them are to intervene. This may be because we assume
other bystanders will act, or it may be because we are paralyzed by
fear. It takes a person like Andrew to break the chain of passivity.
Perhaps if weweren’t sotrapped inour anxious,worrying minds, the
story would be different. For at least part of the population, it cer-
tainly seems to be. Can acting without fear – even without thought in
some cases – be problematic? Of course, it can. But I think we need
people like this around when things really go south.The Dark Knight
High sensation-seekers are often our protectors. Anton, an army
ranger who did search and rescue missions to recover downed
pilots in the military, was the first person who related a metaphor
to me that I came to understand is broadly known in the military
and law enforcement communities. We will call it “the sheep, the
wolves, and the sheepdog.” As far as I know it was first written
about in a book calledOn Combatby Dave Grossman in which he
describes the psychology of war and deadly conflict.^12 The meta-
phor was related to him by a retired colonel who was a Viet Nam
veteran. Here is the basic premise.166 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:43, subject to the Cambridge