Born to Be Wild?

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From the course by Emory University

The Psychology of Thrill Seekers

9 ratings

Emory University

The Psychology of Thrill Seekers

9 ratings

Sensation seeking is a trait we all have and includes the search for complex and new experiences. Thrill Seekers, people with high-sensation seeking personalities, crave exotic and intense experiences even when physical or social risks are involved. This course helps learners examine the remarkable world of the high-sensation seeking personality and explores the lifestyle, psychology, and neuroscience behind thrill seekers.

From the lesson

The Psychology and Neuroscience of Sensation Seeking

This week, we'll take a scientific approach to uncovering more about sensation seeking and focus on the fascinating biological processes and environment at play.

Born to Be Wild?2:26

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response4:06

Meet the Instructors

Kenneth Carter
Professor of Psychology
Oxford College

We learned in the last section,

that high sensation seeking individuals have

a very different experience of the world than average and low sensation seeking people.

Take Nick, for example.

If you watch the TEDx talk,

you met Nick, a base jumper who lives in Twin Falls.

When I interviewed him after his jump,

he told me this,

"Jumping forces you to be in the now.

Like nothing else matters.

And you're just focusing on what you're doing and enjoying it."

He said that during the jump he felt calm.

Psychologist, Csikszentmihalyi refers to the feeling that Nick describes as a flow state.

It's being fully immersed,

holding onto an energized focus,

full involvement and enjoyment of the moment.

In a flow state,

a person is hyper focused connected to what they're doing.

Their emotions are channeled and the person feels joy in the moment.

Csikszentmihalyi suggested, in this state,

you are completely involved in an activity for its own sake,

the ego falls away.

Time flies.

Every action, movement and thought flows

inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.

Your whole being is involved and you're using your skills to the at most.

Csikszentmihalyi calls it an optimal experience.

Most others refer to it as being in the zone.

That almost seems hard to believe for someone like me,

a low sensation seeker.

I would have been freaked out while bass diving.

But it seems that high sensation seekers have

a different experience of the world than average and low sensation seekers.

Where does this personality trait come from?

The different experiences of the world can be explained by both

neurobiological and environmental factors.

In the last lesson,

we talked about some of the components of sensation seeking.

Now let's dive into the research in terms of where it comes from.

After reviewing this section,

you'll be able to,

explain the biological and environmental contributions to high sensation seeking.

Identify and explain the effects of the fight,

flight or freeze response.

Distinguished between the behavioral inhibition system

and the behavioral activation system.

To understand this better,

let's start off by walking through the body's reaction to

stress and the systems that regulate your reaction to stress.

We'll do that in our next lesson.

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