COMMENTARY

doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2007.01959.x

Sensation seeking: a commentary

ABSTRACT Aims To discuss some of the conceptual and methodological issues about race/ethnicity and sensation seeking not discussed fully in the two empirical papers in this issue. Methods The authors of this commentary examined critically the papers in this issue by Vallone et al. and Stephenson et al. and asked if there were underlying or foundational issues that were ignored or not discussed adequately regarding the sensation seeking construct. After reviewing an initial list of those issues, a decision was made to discuss four of them. Findings There is inadequate attention paid to: (i) the developmental aspects of sensation seeking and the almost exclusive focus on youth; (ii) the possibility that sensation seeking is relevant primarily for initial events and not continuation, progression within and across drug classes, progression to dependence, regression, cessation and relapse; (iii) the putative multi-dimensionality of sensation seeking and the pervasive tendency of researchers to ignore the dimensions; and (iv) possible lack of validity of the construct within and across racial and ethnic groups. Conclusions The two papers in this issue by Vallone et al. and Stephenson et al., each of which is focused on racial/ethnic differences in the relationship of sensation seeking to tobacco attitudes, intentions and tobacco use, suggest that it is time for more foundational research on the relevance of the multi-dimensional denition of the construct. The relationship of the putative dimensions to each other and to other variables, and the utility of the construct for segmenting audiences and predicting public health outcomes, is an area where more foundational research is needed. Keywords Ethnicity, race, sensation seeking, tobacco.

The author has no conicts of interests.

The purpose of this commentary is to identify some of the conceptual and methodological implications not discussed fully in the two empirical papers in this issue [1,2]. Those papers are focused on racial/ethnic differences in the relationship of sensation seeking and tobacco use. In the past two decades sensation seeking has become a key psychographic variable used to segment audiences for targeting of mass media prevention messages (public service announcements: PSAs). There is substantial evidence that those classied as high sensation seekers will attend to high sensation value messages, especially if they are embedded in high sensation value programming. An example is embedding PSAs in MTV programming versus embedding them in a televised musical performance of great waltzes. Sensation seeking has also been recognized widely as a predictive factor for various forms of risk-related behavior (i.e. tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug use, unprotected sex, delinquency, interpersonal violence). In spite of a long tradition of theoretical/conceptual work and a growing body of empirical research a number of important issues are unresolved, thus this commentary. First, sensation seeking seems to be most relevant for a small part of the developmental life-cycle. Much of the research on sensation seeking as a predictive factor for

risk-related behavior has been focused on youth or, at most, young adults. In fact, the sensation seeking construct is almost invisible in the literature on adults and risk-related behavior. Does this mean that sensation seeking is relevant only during the rst 1825 years of life? Does sensation seeking among adults become re-conceptualized or classied among adults as something else [i.e. adult attention decit disorder (ADD) or attention decit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), impulsive decision-making, mid-life crisis]? Secondly, if the assumption that sensation seeking is primarily relevant as a predictive factor for youth, is sensation seeking predictive essentially of initial events (i.e. initiation of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana) but not continuing events? This would certainly be consistent with evidence that as a person becomes dependent on a drug, while they may continue seeking the high they initially received, much of their behavior is spent avoiding withdrawal rather than seeking sensation. So does sensation seeking diminish with greater exposure to the behavior that initially produced the sensation? If so, what determines the rate with which those activities become less exciting? Thirdly, sensation seeking has been described consistently as having multiple dimensions: (i) thrill and adventure seeking; (ii) experience seeking; (iii) disinhibition;
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and (iv) boredom susceptibility. The original scales created by Zuckerman reected the putative dimensions. A very large proportion of the existing research literature on sensation seeking uses the work of Zuckerman as the intellectual foundation [35]. However, almost all the research studies using this construct have created a total score of sensation seeking. This approach ignores the putative dimensionality of the construct. Further, almost all of these studies have then taken the total score and used a median split to create high- and low-sensation seeking groups [4]. This ignores not only the putative multi-dimensionality of the construct, but ignores dispersion from the median. The belief that sensation seeking is multi-dimensional obviously guided the development of the eight-item Brief Sensation Seeking Scale because two items were selected from each of the four putative dimensions [7]. The same is true of the even shorter four-item scale used by Vallone, Allen & Clayton paper included in this issue [2]. The implicit assumption underlying these shorter scales is that sensation seeking is multidimensional and that each of the dimensions may be important. However, the need for a brief measure of a complex construct is strong in evaluating the impact of media campaigns. Is it possible that a more robust measurement of one dimension would be better than one measure with one item, or two items representing each dimension? Fourthly, it is probably safe to assume that because sensation seeking is dened as a presumed universal and stable personality trait, a one-size-ts-all approach to measurement of the trait is appropriate. The ndings of Vallone et al. using national samples of youth provide a rationale to question the validity of that assumption [2]. The work of Stephenson et al. [1] using Latino samples of adults in two cities in Texas also provides a rationale to question the validity of the assumption. One possibility is that by creating a generic measure of sensation seeking and using that construct/measure to segment audiences for messages we have ignored another bumper-sticker reality. Namely, sensation seeking may reect different strokes for different folks. Many years ago there were only a few electronic and print media outlets and vectors for the general public to be informed and inuenced by public health messages, regardless of sensation seeking propensity. Now, there is a huge variety of sources to deliver public health messages and those with high sensation seeking needs have a large menu from which to select entertainment, recreational and public health information. This heterogeneity may dilute the value of sensation seeking as a psychographic segmenting variable, particularly because its potency seems to be inuenced by the sensation value of the programming into which public health messages are embedded. If viewing choices were limited to only the so-called

legacy networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) this would not be a problem. However, with the proliferation of program selections from cable and other media vehicles, this heterogeneity may limit signicantly the potential for using sensation seeking as a targeting factor. The two papers in this issue, each of which is focused on racial/ethnic differences in the relationship of sensation seeking to tobacco attitudes, intentions and tobacco use, suggest that it is time for more foundational research on the relevance of the multi-dimensional denition of the construct. The relationship of the putative dimensions to each other and to other variables, and the utility of the construct for segmenting audiences and predicting public health outcomes is an area where more foundational research is needed. In addition, from a translational perspective, sensation seeking is a very interesting construct. It is one of those constructs for which there is a close analog, novelty seeking at the pre-clinical level in a rat model. The construct is also relevant because evidence from animal studies shows that novelty seeking stimulates the reward center in the brain (i.e. the mesolimbic dopaminergic system in the shell of the nucleus accumbens), the same reward center stimulated by nicotine [8]. The developmental aspects of novelty/ sensation seeking could be examined in animal models comparing neuroscience impacts on adult compared to peri-adolescent rats. In addition, because it is likely that context inuences the expression of sensation/novelty seeking, it should be possible to model this in animal research. The authors of this commentary agree with Palmgreen et al. [6] that sensation seeking is a potent predictive factor for various types of risk-related behavior, but argue for considerably more conceptual and methodological work on the construct and its measurement. If sensation seeking does vary by developmental age and stage, and by race/ethnicity, further work is needed to insure the validity of segmenting and targeting specic audiences on the basis of sensation seeking. Because context may also affect sensation seeking, it is possible that socio-economic status factors may provide environmental boundaries and parameters to the types of stimuli that attract so-called high sensation seekers.
RICHARD R. CLAYTON, MELISSA J. H. SEGRESS & CRYSTAL A. CAUDILL

University of Kentucky, College of Public Health, Lexington, KY, USA. E-mail: clayton@uky.edu

References
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6. Palmgreen P., Donohew L., Lorch E. P., Hoyle R. H., Stephenson M. T. Television campaigns and adolescent marijuana use: tests of sensation seeking targeting. Am J Public Health 2001; 91: 2926. 7. Hoyle R. H., Stephenson M. T., Palmgreen P., Lorch E. P., Donohew L. Reliability and validity of scores on a brief measure of sensation seeking. Pers Individ Dif 2002; 32: 401 14. 8. Cain M. E., Saucier D. A., Bardo M. T. Novelty seeking and drug use: contribution of an animal model. Exp Clin Psychopharmacol 2005; 13: 36775.

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