Intercultural communication can require a person to mas-
ter nuances and manage the anxiety of not being sure what to do.
There are unfamiliar norms and shifting expectations. The process
requires empathy, patience, and tolerance for ambiguity, and
knowing what we know about sensation-seekers, it seems they
are up for this challenge.^14
HSSs find intercultural interaction to be more fun and satis-
fying than LSSs and they have attitudes and behaviors that make
these friendships more successful for them. The increased comfort
leads to positive attitudes, and more experience and increased
competency. And all of this leads to better intercultural commu-
nication. In a study of intercultural friendships, Susan Morgan and
Lili Arasaratnam found that high sensation-seekers were more
likely to indicate that they find it “boring” to always associate
with people of their own culture and that they “enjoy” initiating
conversations with someone from a different culture.^15
For the high sensation-seeker, intercultural communica-
tion is also a form of social risk-taking and HSSs have the
biological predisposition to form friendships in risky social
environments. Some high sensation-seekers are driven by the
mystery and curiosity of these experiences.^16 The high levels of
uncertainty make this a particularly appealing challenge for
a high sensation-seeker.Loving Differently
It’s easy to see how the outgoing, engaging style of sensation-
seekers could be very beneficial in certain circumstances. There
are situations in which standing closer, talking louder, and making
more eye contact can be extremely useful – for example, when
meeting new people in a bar or nightclub.
You see, high sensation-seekers are attracted to a more ludic
style of love. To understand what that means, and to better com-
prehend what love is and how it works, we need to take a look at the
work of sociologist John Allen Lee in the 1970s.The Six Styles of Love
In 1973, Lee interviewed hundreds of people in order to find out
more about love.^17 He was determined to try to explain and cate-
gorize the different ways that people love. Through his interviews102 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:21:35, subject to the Cambridge