Sensation seeking is a heritable personality trait that has been reliably linked to behavioral disorders. The dopamine system has been hypothesized to contribute to variations in sensation seeking between different individuals, and both experimental and observational studies in humans and nonhuman animals provide evidence for the involvement of the dopamine system in sensation-seeking behavior....

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES An association has been shown between alcohol use and high-risk sexual behaviour. One of the important variables that might mediate risky sexual behaviour among alcohol users is the sensation-seeking dimension of personality. This study was undertaken with the aim to assess the relationship between sensation seeking and sexual risk taking among heavy alcohol users admitt...

Both sensation seeking and affiliation with deviant peer groups are risk factors for delinquency in adolescence. In this study, we use a sample of adolescent twins (n = 549), 13 to 20 years old (M age = 15.8 years), in order to test the interactive effects of peer deviance and sensation seeking on delinquency in a genetically informative design. Consistent with a socialization effect, affiliati...

A retrospective case-control study was performed in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1985-1986 to test the hypotheses that 1) criminality is a risk factor for severe injury, and 2) the association between criminality and injury can be explained in terms of a common underlying factor--increased sensation-seeking tendencies. A total of 140 males with spinal cord injury were individually matched with 14...

Sensation seeking is central to research on the prevention of risky health behaviors, but current measures of sensation seeking are fairly long, thereby reducing their chances of inclusion in some research projects. Hence, we developed and evaluated two brief indices of sensation seeking, a four-item measure that retains the framework of the Sensation Seeking Scale-Form V (SSS-V) and a shorter ...

Sensation seeking is a personality trait that is robustly correlated with delinquent behavior in adolescence. The current study tested specific contextual factors hypothesized to facilitate, exacerbate or attenuate this risk factor for adolescent delinquency. Individual differences in sensation seeking, peer deviance, parental monitoring and self-reported delinquent behavior were assessed in a ...

One hundred thirty-eight college students completed a questionnaire assessing level of sensation seeking, number of close and casual friends, Internet usage, liking certain styles of music, and genre of music listened to most often. It was found that the number of casual and close friends was positively associated with sensation seeking. Individuals who reported using the Internet to get sex-or...

Previous research has identified a relationship between season of birth and level of novelty seeking (Chotai, Lundberg, & Adolfsson, 2003). The current study investigates whether level of sensation seeking is also related to birth season in individuals from the Northern Hemisphere. Participants were 448 students of The Open University, UK (125 males, 323 females, age range 20–69 years, mean = 3...