Sensation Seeking Scale

The Sensation Seeking Scale is one of the most common psychological instruments for measuring sensation seeking. It was created in 1964 by Marvin Zuckerman, at the University of Delaware.[1] Zuckerman created the scale with the purpose of better understanding personality traits such as neuroticism, antisocial behavior, and psychopathy.[2] This has gone through a few iterations and is currently on its 1978 version: SSS-V. There are 4 different aspects (subscales), which are: Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS); Disinhibition (Dis); Experience Seeking (ES); and Boredom Susceptibility (BS). Each subscale contains 10 items, making a total of 40 items. Zuckerman has proposed that these 'traits' come from a psycho-biological interaction.[3]

  1. ^ Zuckerman, Marvin, et al. "Development of a sensation-seeking scale." Journal of Consulting Psychology 28.6 (1964): 477.
  2. ^ Arnett, J. (1993). Sensation Seeking: A New Conceptualization And A New Scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 16(2), 289-296. Retrieved October 1, 2014, from http://www.jeffreyarnett.com/aiss1992article.pdf
  3. ^ Zuckerman, M. (1996). The Psychobiological Model for Impulsive Unsocialized Sensation Seeking: A Comparative Approach. Neuropsychobiology, 34, 125-129