at first. When you’re in free fall immediately followed by a serene
sort of feeling...the closest thing to humans flying.”
This is the status quo for thrill- and adventure-seekers. Risks
may be ignored, tolerated, or minimized, and may even be consid-
ered to add to the excitement of the activity. In contrast, those who
do not seek out thrill- and adventure-seeking may avoid activities
that seem risky or dangerous.Experience-Seeking
Even if you’re not an extreme thrill- and adventure-seeker, there
may be a component of sensation-seeking that applies to you. So
while you may not like to skydive, you may still exhibit
a sensation-seeking trait associated with people who enjoy new,
complex, and intense sensations and experiences. It’s called
experience-seeking.
Experience-seeking is the quest for new experiences that
challenge the mind and senses. Experience-seekers look for
a variety of experiences that are unique, rather than dangerous.
These experiences may affect sensation-seekers emotionally, intel-
lectually, or interpersonally, through all five senses, including
sight, sound, taste, touch, and even smell. Think of experience-
seeking as internal sensation-seeking.
A few years ago, I was headed to Hong Kong for a week. It was
my first time there so I decided to hit up theNew York Timesfor some
ideas of what to do. They have a feature in their travel section called
“36 hours” where they give advice about things to do if you are only
going to be in a location for a short time. They suggested a restaurant
that was pretty difficult to book. It took my friends 3 months to get
reservations. A few weeks before we left, I got an email confirming our
reservation. It read, “We will delight you with a 6 course exotic meal.”
That sounded good. It went on, “and we’ll present you with the menu
of the meal at the end of the meal.” What? The END of the meal? If you
score high in experience-seeking, I bet you are thinking, “Sure, I’ll try
anything once...that sounds kind of fun.” If you, like me, score low in
experience-seeking, it’s likely that you want to know exactly what
things are BEFORE you put them into your mouth.
Remember Sophie from the start of the chapter? While she
scores low in thrill- and adventure-seeking – she wouldn’t go sky-
diving again – she scores high in experience-seeking. For Sophie,18 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:20:54, subject to the Cambridge