Sensation seeking and the tendency to view the world as threatening

Franken, Robert E.; Gibson, Kevin J.; Rowland, Guy L.

doi:10.1016/0191-8869(92)90214-a

Cited by 91 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…In addition to the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, participants in the Cognitive Reactivity Study also completed the Sensation-Seeking Scale 30,31 and the Attitudes Towards Risk Questionnaire. 32 Participants' ratings on the scales were uncorrelated with body fat (sensation seeking: r ¼ À0.02, P ¼ 0.92; taking risks: r ¼ 0.06, P ¼ 0.70; thinking about risks: r ¼ À0.03, P ¼ 0.86), which suggests that sensation-seeking or risk-seeking behavior between individuals who were more versus less lean was not appreciably different.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Higher body fat percentage is associated with increased cortisol reactivity and impaired cognitive resilience in response to acute emotional stress

2008

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Objective: Cortisol is elevated in individuals with both increased emotional stress and higher percentages of body fat. Cortisol is also known to affect cognitive performance, particularly spatial processing and working memory. We hypothesized that increased body fat might therefore be associated with decreased performance on a spatial processing task, in response to an acute real-world stressor. Design: We tested two separate samples of participants undergoing their first (tandem) skydive. In the first sample (N ¼ 78), participants were tested for salivary cortisol and state anxiety (Spielberger State Anxiety Scale) during the plane's 15-min ascent to altitude in immediate anticipation of the jump. In a second sample (N ¼ 20), participants were tested for salivary cortisol, as well as cardiac variables (heart rate, autonomic regulation through heart rate variability) and performance on a cognitive task of spatial processing, selective attention and working memory. Results: In response to the skydive, individuals with greater body fat percentages showed significantly increased reactivity for both cortisol (on both samples) and cognition, including decreased accuracy of our task of spatial processing, selective attention and working memory. These cognitive effects were restricted to the stress response and were not found under baseline conditions. There were no body fat interactions with cardiac changes in response to the stressor, suggesting that the cognitive effects were specifically hormone mediated rather than secondary to general activation of the autonomic nervous system. Conclusions: Our results indicate that, under real-world stress, increased body fat may be associated with endocrine stress vulnerability, with consequences for deleterious cognitive performance.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Higher body fat percentage is associated with increased cortisol reactivity and impaired cognitive resilience in response to acute emotional stress

2008

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“…Recently, Lissek and colleagues proposed the aversive motivational system for sensation seeking whereby low sensation seekers showed high activated anxious level relative to high sensation seekers in the presence of stress (Lissek et al, 2005;Lissek and Powers, 2003). In addition, people with different sensation seeking scores have different attitudes to our world (Franken et al, 1992;Horvath and Zuckerman, 1993). For example, in daily life low sensation seekers leave themselves in more safety lifestyle, and always experience more anxiety in face of stress situation whereas high sensation seekers view the environment as less threatening (Lissek et al, 2005;Roberti, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The time course of novelty processing in sensation seeking: An ERP study

Zheng

Jin

et al. 2010

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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“…Participants provided information regarding age, gender, height and weight, and filled out questionnaires designed to measure different measures of personality related to risk aversion. These questionnaires included the NEO Personality Inventory (PAR, Lutz FL), Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al, 1983), Attitudes Towards Risk Questionnaire (Franken et al, 1992), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI: Mind Garden, Menlo Park, CA), and the Sensation-Seeking Scale (Zuckerman and Link, 1968). For the primary study, trait anxiety scores ranged from 20 to 53 (M = 33.07 ± 7.11) while sensation-seeking scores ranged from 16 to 35 (M = 24.85 ± 4.68); and detailed subject information for the pilot study is provided in Appendix A.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%