Using a series of four studies involving 573 women and 272
male college students, Jeff Joireman and his research team investi-
gated the relationships between sensation-seeking, impulsivity,
and a focus on immediate consequences of behavior. They used
a theory called the General Aggression Model (GAM).^36
The GAM recognized the complex nature of aggression. It
suggests that biology, environment, feelings, thoughts, and how
revved up you are can all influence aggressive or non-aggressive
behavior.^37 The GAM says that your personality and the situa-
tion you are in can influence how you perceive your situation.
How you perceive your situation can in turn create emotions
which can cause arousal. This arousal can influence how you
assess your situation and can influence what decisions you
make. All of this together influences if you act aggressively or
non-aggressively.
Another twist on the GAM is that Jeff Joireman’s team also
examined an individual’s ability to consider the outcomes of their
behavior or CFC (consideration of future consequences). Joireman’s
group used a 12-item scale with questions such as “I consider how
things might be in the future and try to influence those things with
my day to day behavior.”^38
What did they find? Sensation-seeking seems to affect
aggression because it influences hostile thoughts and anger.
What’s more, high sensation-seekers are drawn to situations that
could elicit aggression. There’s more. Scores in disinhibition, in
particular, were the best way to predict physical aggression and
boredom susceptibility was the best predictor of verbal aggression.
For some sensation-seekers aggression is “fun,” but the researchers
noticed this brings about a paradox.
Some sensation-seekers are more likely to engage in aggres-
sion in part because it relieves boredom, but also because they often
harbor feelings of hostility and anger. Why? Over time the aggres-
sive behavior that sensation-seekers participate in (you’ll remem-
ber from the relationship chapter that many high sensation-seekers
love to push people’s buttons) can produce negative reactions from
other people. This could be another reason why high sensation-
seekers experience a higher level of hostility and anger than aver-
age and low sensation-seekers.
What about consideration of future consequences? Don’t
high sensation-seekers know that acting aggressively might cause
problems? They do, but they might not care. High sensation-seekers153 / The Dark Side of High Sensation-SeekingDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:20:10, subject to the Cambridge