queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2005-07-26 10:16 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2005-07-26 10:16 pm
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BBC Sensation-Seeking Quiz
Thrill and adventure seeking - you score 4 out of 10
This consists of items expressing desires to engage in sports or activities involving some physical danger or risk such as mountain climbing, parachute jumping, scuba diving, speeding in a car, etc. [These questions were hard for me to answer because I don't tend to be exactly afraid of a lot of such activities, but I don't tend to be exactly interested in them, either. It's more as though I find them boring, really - they seem like such meaningless risks to take, being purely physical, and taken for no greater purpose than the desire for risk itself.]
Experience seeking - you score 7 out of 10
This describes the desire to seek new experiences through the mind and senses by living in a nonconforming life style with unconventional friends, and through travel. [It does not surprise me that I scored highest in this one. I did, after all, choose to be queer!]
Disinhibition - you score 2 out of 10
This describes the need to disinhibit behaviour in the social sphere by drinking, partying and seeking variety in sexual partners. [In that case, how did I even manage to score 2 in it?]
Boredom susceptibility - you score 3 out of 10
This indicates an aversion for repetitive experience of any kind, routine work, or even dull or predictable people. Other items indicate a restless reaction when things are unchanging. [Well, I do eat pasta-roni for dinner nearly every single night. But hey, I eat different flavors of it! And at least I certainly don't share my mother's tendency to watch her favorite movies over 500 times in a row and read her favorite books over equally many times.]
Your total sensation seeking score is 16 out of 40
Sensation seeking is a personality trait expressed in behaviour as a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences and to take physical risks for the sake of having such experiences. These experiences could take the form of extreme adventure activities such as skydiving, snowboarding and mountain climbing. But the trait can also express itself in high drug, alcohol or tobacco use.
Men generally score higher than women on the total score and on all the subscales except Experience Seeking. [Do women score higher in that, or just equally high? And what are the average scores for each? For that matter, what's the average score for humans in general? What's the point of a quiz result that doesn't tell me a thing about how I compare to the average?] Sensation Seeking Scale scores increase during childhood, peak in the late teens or early twenties, and thereafter decrease steadily with age. [Yeah, I think I've somewhat noticed mine declining already. What causes that? Is it a biologically preprogrammed process or does it have anything to do with not having very much to lose? Because people in their teens and early twenties tend to be old enough to find living with their parents extremely confining, and young enough to not have any other options yet - thus, they tend to be rather dissatisfied with their lives.]
People with similar scores on the Sensation Seeking Scale also tend to be more romantically compatible with each other. [And this information, when combined with the fact that males tend to have higher scores than females, should serve to remind us all of the immense advantages of turning queer!]
Divorced males score higher than single and married males, and divorced and single females score higher than married females. [But why can't you even be bothered to tell us exactly what their scores are, so that I could know where mine fits in?]
Take the BBC Sensation-Seeking Quiz (. . . or not)
This consists of items expressing desires to engage in sports or activities involving some physical danger or risk such as mountain climbing, parachute jumping, scuba diving, speeding in a car, etc. [These questions were hard for me to answer because I don't tend to be exactly afraid of a lot of such activities, but I don't tend to be exactly interested in them, either. It's more as though I find them boring, really - they seem like such meaningless risks to take, being purely physical, and taken for no greater purpose than the desire for risk itself.]
Experience seeking - you score 7 out of 10
This describes the desire to seek new experiences through the mind and senses by living in a nonconforming life style with unconventional friends, and through travel. [It does not surprise me that I scored highest in this one. I did, after all, choose to be queer!]
Disinhibition - you score 2 out of 10
This describes the need to disinhibit behaviour in the social sphere by drinking, partying and seeking variety in sexual partners. [In that case, how did I even manage to score 2 in it?]
Boredom susceptibility - you score 3 out of 10
This indicates an aversion for repetitive experience of any kind, routine work, or even dull or predictable people. Other items indicate a restless reaction when things are unchanging. [Well, I do eat pasta-roni for dinner nearly every single night. But hey, I eat different flavors of it! And at least I certainly don't share my mother's tendency to watch her favorite movies over 500 times in a row and read her favorite books over equally many times.]
Your total sensation seeking score is 16 out of 40
Sensation seeking is a personality trait expressed in behaviour as a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences and to take physical risks for the sake of having such experiences. These experiences could take the form of extreme adventure activities such as skydiving, snowboarding and mountain climbing. But the trait can also express itself in high drug, alcohol or tobacco use.
Men generally score higher than women on the total score and on all the subscales except Experience Seeking. [Do women score higher in that, or just equally high? And what are the average scores for each? For that matter, what's the average score for humans in general? What's the point of a quiz result that doesn't tell me a thing about how I compare to the average?] Sensation Seeking Scale scores increase during childhood, peak in the late teens or early twenties, and thereafter decrease steadily with age. [Yeah, I think I've somewhat noticed mine declining already. What causes that? Is it a biologically preprogrammed process or does it have anything to do with not having very much to lose? Because people in their teens and early twenties tend to be old enough to find living with their parents extremely confining, and young enough to not have any other options yet - thus, they tend to be rather dissatisfied with their lives.]
People with similar scores on the Sensation Seeking Scale also tend to be more romantically compatible with each other. [And this information, when combined with the fact that males tend to have higher scores than females, should serve to remind us all of the immense advantages of turning queer!]
Divorced males score higher than single and married males, and divorced and single females score higher than married females. [But why can't you even be bothered to tell us exactly what their scores are, so that I could know where mine fits in?]
Take the BBC Sensation-Seeking Quiz (. . . or not)
no subject
For me, the risk is part of the thrill. Yet, I would still have do some activities just for the extraordinary experiences, and it just so happens that the risk is part of the activity. Another reason I go to such unusual places is the desire to learn - innate curiousity. And for some of these places, there is an element of risk in just being there.
I've walked on a hot lava field just to see lava flow over a cliff and into the ocean. I've flown over a volcano just to see what the inside looks like. I've swam with a 6 foot grey reef shark just to admire it. And world looked so incredible when I was hanging from a parachute and just floating on the breeze at 5000 feet above ground. And I once walked far from shore onto an iceberg at night just to experience a flat, silent, dark night.
no subject
I can do a lot of things that scare many other people, like driving on winding roads carved into the sides of mountains, with a thousand-foot drop at the edge of the road, without feeling particularly bothered. But I don't feel a desire to go drive on them because the risk of death is exciting. I just don't mind driving on them if there's someplace at the end of the road that I really want to get to. Certain people (most notably Mikie) have questioned my own sanity because of my lack of fear in those situations. I suspect I could go parachuting right this moment with a similar near-complete lack of fear, and although I'm not so sure I'd be quite as unafraid to do the other things you described, it's not as though I can't imagine myself ever being persuaded to lose all fear of them. On the contrary, if I had a strong motivation to do them a time or two, and maybe a little reassurance and encouragement the first time, I'm quite positive I could extremely rapidly learn to be entirely unafraid of them.
But the thing is, my own ability to easily lose my fear of such situations strikes me as something of a fault, and I feel that I should put my effort into resisting that loss of fear, and trying to consciously develop more fear of such situations. The fact that the road to my parents' house is carved into the side of a mountain and I'm likely to keep getting invited to drive up and down on it many times per year for decades to come makes it unlikely that I'll ever be able to lose my comfort with driving on such roads, no matter how hard I might try to. But lava and sharks and icebergs are dangers that I don't have to condition myself to become stupidly unafraid of, so I suspect I should take advantage of the opportunity to retain as much fear of them as I can muster.
no subject
My risks have all been calculated risks. I would never take a risk if I didn't was not prepared, and didn't know what to do in case of real danger. I don't believe in foolhardy or unnecessary risks.
For example, I would not jump out of an airplane unless I knew my parachute was properly packed. Nor would I swim with a shark if I seriously suspected the shark would attack me. (Swimming with a shark is actually less dangerous than driving on a highway. And it helps to understand and interpret shark behavior.) I walked across the lava field after I checked to make sure I had proper clothing and supplies. As for the iceberg, I knew it was pushed up against the shoreline, and so would not drift away. (I should tell you this story about these guys that drove a pickup out onto an ice flow so they could spin the truck around on ice at high speeds. The ice drifted away from shore, trapping the pickup truck and drivers. The US Coast Guard sent a ship out to retrieve them at cost of $300 in cold cash. The guys paid for the ride home. That's an foolhardy risk I would *not* do.)