CHASING RISK:
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THRILL-SEEKING
By Amber Silva & Nicholas Sokic
He was 30 feet above ground, clutching onto the rock formation surrounding him. He reached for another handhold. It broke off, sending him plummeting down to Earth.
Luckily, he managed to land on his feet and escape with only a few bruises.
Sebastian Dill belongs to a select group of people that don't spend their downtime reading books or relaxing but rather, chasing risk.
Dill, a 20-year-old English Literature student at Western University, doesn’t limit himself to free solo climbing, like in the incident he described above. Free solo climbing is exactly like rock climbing but with no equipment.
Born and raised in Bermuda, he says that the natural environment has allowed him to partake in a variety of different extreme activities. He also enjoys free diving, freestyle snowboarding, mountain biking and deep sea spearfishing.
Whether you call it extreme sports or sensation seeking activities, they are dangerous.
Dill, pictured at Boler Mountain in London, Ont. in March 2019. Photograph by Raymond Dean.
Then, Dill participates in The Nevis Bungy, in Queenstown, New Zealand - the third highest bungee platform in the world. Video provided by Sebastian Dill.
“One of my reasons for living is to feel the rush. Not even that, the hyper-focus. Nothing else matters – you’re just there. It’s the most real you can get,” says Dill.
Dill’s reasoning makes sense in everyday terms, but Western University psychology professor Tony Vernon has a more scientific explanation for why some individuals participate in sensation seeking activities. Simply, that there is a genetic component.
The Co-Twin Control Study of Relationships Among Combat Exposure, Combat-Related PTSD, and Other Mental Disorders examines separated-at-birth American twins who fought in the Vietnam War – around 7000 of them. It was designed to look at a number of cognitive effects like PTSD and depression and examine their heritability. The study found a strong genetic correlation between the brothers that would have compelled them to risk their lives and voluntarily charge into ratholes for their country. This correlation was stronger than in sets of men who were unrelated. The study concluded that it was likely that they shared a specific – dare say, 'sensation seeking' – gene that allowed them to be more willing to put themselves at risk.
Sensation seeking activities aren’t necessarily limited to the extreme sports that Dill participates in, says Riley Hinson, another Western University psychology professor.
“If you sort of take what Dr. Vernon had to say and put it in the context of drug addiction, there’s been a long history of research that has looked at personality characteristics of individuals that might be more prone to use drugs,” says Hinson. “Among those are things like impulsivity.”
The connection that Hinson makes between activities like these and recreational drug use remains an implicit one. Yet Dill, who doesn’t even drink coffee, says he would probably turn to other ways of getting the thrill if he didn’t have access to these outlets for adrenaline.
With all of his attention on chasing a thrill, Dill says he only has time to focus on one risk at a time and making sure that he never becomes wholly reckless. Occasionally though, Dill says he tries to push his personal limits.
“When I was younger, I used to be worried about the consequences more. Recently I’ve had the 'fuck-its.' Like, 'this could be dangerous – ah fuck it I'll just go for it,'” says Dill. “I’ve been… I don’t know if 'desensitized' is the word… I need to push it, and then it’s [onto] the next thing.”
Dill’s experiences with free solo climbing and other sensation seeking activities have edged closer to the mainstream in recent years. The prime example being Free Solo, an American documentary about adventurer Alex Honnold’s 3200-foot free solo climb of El Capitan, a rock formation in Yosemite National Park. The film won the Best Documentary Feature at the 2019 Academy Awards.
“If you get the genes for high sensation seeking you are more likely to engage in those risky activities than someone who didn't get those genes,” says Vernon. “But just because you inherit the genes doesn't guarantee that you're going to become a skydiver or take drugs – but it makes you more susceptible to doing so.”
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Vernon says that no study has been able to nail down the specific gene responsible for sensation seeking, yet he cites a massive study published in 2003 as evidence for a general genetic origin.
This graph comes from a 2010 Australian study published in the Behavior Genetics journal. The graph depicts the different results of Zuckerman's scale from a selection of twins from the Australian Twin Registry (ATR). It shows that males tend to land higher on the sensation seeking scale than females.
There is a scale to measure an individual’s propensity for sensation seeking. It was created and named after the University of Delaware’s Marvin Zuckerman in 1964.
It measures four different aspects: Boredom Susceptibility, Experience Seeking, Disinhibition, and Thrill and Adventure Seeking.
There are 10 rankings within each of these aspects, for a total of 40 points on the scale.
At first, Zuckerman’s theory of sensation seeking was simply considered to be part of the 'Dark Tetrad' of personality traits alongside narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
“Zuckerman’s theories were dismissed as being a combination of extraversion and psychoticism,” says Vernon. “A number of theories over the years validated [his] idea that sensation seeking was its own distinct thing.”
Extraversion and psychoticism, and later sensation seeking, are traits that are discovered to be far more common in men, as identified in the graph above.
However, there are some standout exceptions to this rule. Jessica Buscher and Emily McDermott are two of them.
Buscher regularly rappels off of bridges and cliffs, and also frequently pilots small airplanes in preparation for annual air rallies. McDermott is a para-athlete, whitewater rafting guide, rock climber and mountain biker who recently began downhill biking.
Buscher, pictured before the thrill of rappelling down a rock wall. Photograph provided by Jessica Buscher.
McDermott, pictured after the thrill of bungee jumping. Photograph provided by Emily McDermott.
The way Dill and McDermott describe their experiences are, at least cognitively, nearly identical.
“It’s the most unreal thing to be hyper-focused on a specific task and it’s like the whole world melts away,” says McDermott. “It’s almost like being on drugs.”
Buscher directly challenges the gender disparities in sensation seeking activities through her flying.
But the reasoning for the relative gender inequity in sensation seeking activities has its roots in evolution, according to Vernon.
“Let's say you're a male and there aren't enough females around and you want to mate. You might have to be a little bit adventurous to leave your safe environment to go scurrying around or hunting for food,” says Vernon.
While psychologists such as Vernon say that the passion for thrill-seeking in each individual can’t be pinned down to a single explanation, for Dill, he says he was born to do it.
“[My husband] finds little planes to be hot and cramped, but supports my flying endeavours,” says Buscher. “[He holds] down the fort when I am off in a plane over unfamiliar territory or descending a new mountain with our kids.”
Dill enjoying the Atlantic Ocean water surrounding his Bermudian home. Video provided by Dill.
“Before I was two, I would just jump in the ocean, sink to the bottom and chill. My parents would freak out and pull me up and I kept doing it,” says Dill.
“One day they left me down there for like 30 seconds and pulled me back up. I had a big ol’ smile and jumped right back in.”
