The Founder of Scientific Research on High
Sensation-Seeking
Despite all of the previous attempts to explain the thrill-seeking
phenomenon, scientific research on sensation-seeking didn’t begin
until the late twentieth century, and it didn’t start in the base
camps of Mount Everest or on the cobbled streets of Pamplona or
even the racetracks of Talladega. It began in a dark room filled with
nothing – literally. Researchers weren’t trying to explain mountain
climbing and kayaking, or running from bulls, or race-car driving.
They were trying to get to the bottom of mind control.
Shortly after the Korean War, there were reports that the
Chinese government was using “brainwashing” techniques invol-
ving sensory deprivation for torture and mind control. Canadian
psychologists and the Canadian government were eager to under-
stand these brainwashing techniques, so the government began
funding psychological research on sensory deprivation.
Among those embarking on this research were Marvin
Zuckerman and his lab at McGill University in Montreal.^16 In the
typical experiment in Zuckerman’s lab, participants would spend
hours in environments where they could hear or see very little. In
some cases, people would sit alone in a dark, sound-dampened
room with nothing to do. They could leave only to get a lunch of
cold sandwiches or to use the bathroom.
Just as interest in mind control had inspired research in
sensory deprivation, otherworldly concerns also helped shape the
methods of this research. Zuckerman’s lab adopted the Ganzfeld
Procedure, a method of approximating sensory deprivation, to
carry out some of the study. Wolfgang Metzger created this proce-
dure in the 1930s, hoping it would release ESP abilities hampered
by outside stimulation.^17 It casts subjects into a fuzzy nothingness,
into what Metzger called unstructured sensations. Cut a ping-pong
ball in half and tape the halves over your eyes while listening to
static in headphones if you are curious about what it feels like.
Zuckerman’s curiosity was piqued by how people reacted to
the loss of sensation. For the first hour or so, all of the research
subjects simply sat in the nothingness. But after that, things chan-
ged. Some sat quietly for hours upon hours. Others fidgeted,
squirmed, and became bored and anxious, among other things.
Strangely, no existing psychological test could reliably pre-
dict how subjects would react to sensory deprivation. Zuckerman12 / 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