Could it be that high sensation-seekers also seek to help
others? A study done in 2008 at Auburn University paints an inter-
esting picture of the relationship between high sensation-seekers
and the desire to help others.^13 In the study, scientists interviewed
1,100 college students who were extreme sports enthusiasts to find
out how motivated they were to engage in civic participation. The
outcome? While high sensation-seeking did not correlate with cur-
rent civic participation, itwasassociated with the desire to work for
activist and reform-oriented organizations, specifically in leader-
ship roles.
Not too surprising. This is what high sensation-seekers do.
It’s who they are. These are the people who are out at the edges
pushing the bounds of human experience, trying to reshape the
world around them. They do this out on the hillside, they do it in
the boardroom, they do it for other people. And sometimes they do
it for all three.
But can fearlessness also come with a dark side? Let’s think
about the attributes of what makes a good hero. Impulsiveness so
she can jump in and help at a moment’s notice, boldness, and at
times aggressiveness, can be helpful too – for example, to help
resolve tough conflicts. It’s also most likely the case that the same
list of attributes can be applied to villains as well. Some researchers
believe that many of the ingredients of what makes a person
a psychopath are really the same ingredients that can make
a person a hero. David Lykken suggested that the two are “twigs
off the same branch.”^14
In fact, these same attributes could be helpful for politics,
business, the military, or even extreme sports. Boldness, self-focus,
and a defiant personality were linked with both altruism and
a concept the researchers called everyday heroism. Everyday hero-
ism (sometimes called small “h” heroism) are the little helpful
things that people do every day. Big “H” heroism involves big
risks like death or injury, but small h heroism are things like help-
ing others, or showing kindness. Christina Patton, Sara Francis
Smith, and Scott Lilienfeld surveyed 251 first responders and 170
who didn’t have that job.^15 The researchers discovered that no
matter their profession, fearlessness, dominance, boldness and,
yes, sensation-seeking were all correlated with everyday heroism.
That means that the higher your sensation-seeking score, the more
likely you are to be involved in those acts of everyday heroism. It
takes a certain personality for both big and small h heroism. Frank169 / Super Power or Super ProblemDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:43, subject to the Cambridge