A team from the school of psychology and neuroscience at the University of St Andrews discovered that men are less willing to take part in physical challenges such as skydiving than they used to.
The findings of the research led by Dr Kate Cross have been published in the journal Scientific Reports and was co-authored by Dr De-Laine Cyrenne and Dr Gillian Brown.
Researchers focused on the sensation-seeking personality trait which has been described by the university as the desire to pursue novel or intense experiences even if this involves risk.
A sensation seeking scale, version V (SSS-V) questionnaire was used to find out if people were willing to try various activities.
In the late 1970s more men were more likely to try parachuting, scuba diving or mountaineering than women, but over the years their desire for thrills has decreased.
The male average is now closer to the female average, backing up the argument that some sex differences in behaviour have decreased which is linked to cultural changes.
More on Sensation-Seeking...
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44 comments:
I wonder if it's an economy thing. Thrill seeking comes a fair bit from being settled in other parts of life, so it's testing the boundaries. When other parts of life, however, are themselves areas of stress, one finds more relaxing pursuits.
I'm still trying to kill myself frequently on my Harley Road King!
2003 Hundred Anniversary Special!
I thought the head mounted camera would have swung these thrill-seeking statistics upwards.
There must be some other gravitational? forces at play here.
I think there must be some truth to the claim that men have become less thrill-seeking.
It has been literally decades since I've been in the shower with my Joe Namath endorsed, great smell of Brut® soap on a rope.
Need I say more?
A sensation seeking scale
Writing a product review on the blog is way to increase traffic.
Chip's Nikon review is king.
I had no idea.
D'oh!
Have you any thrill-seeking products you want to review?
Deborah's bed post.. D'oh!
I didn't get it.
Tomato pudding?
We could blame residual estrogens in the water supply. Or video games. OTOH, I walk by the new skateboard park in Oceanside everyday and more and more people are using it each day. Maybe a dozen the first time I checked and up to around 30 or 40 yesterday. I haven't seen one female there yet. Perhaps they're all gay because isn't part of the thrill of skateboarding showing off for chicks?
Nobody wears kneepads or helmets at the park either. Probably uncool.
Oh and there's a commercial skydiving place right next door at our small airport. People jump and then land next to the runway. I'll start trying to notice whether any women are partaking. They're suited up and helmeted, but I might be able to tell them apart by the the way they land.
You have to do an environmental impact study before doing anything thrilling.
That alone takes out some of the zip nowadays.
Paddy O said...
I wonder if it's an economy thing.
Possibly.
Slipping into Mecca during the Hajj disguised as an A-rab or finding the source of the Nile is out of a lot of people's budget these days.
Also, we've all got wives and stuff and the gutter has to be cleaned...
80% of teachers are women. They have feminized our culture.
Hello? People do less scuba diving and parachute jumping, cause they are rock climbing, hang gliding, para sailing, bungee jumping, kitesurfing, etc.
By comparison Scuba is relatively expense and "old fashioned" and so is Parachute jumping. And the number of women who do either is rather large, which takes the macho thrill aspect out of it.
Trooper, your 7:54... laughed my ass off!
We can do it vicariously now.
It was more curiosity than thrill seeking, back in the day.
Can you snap-roll an Aeronca 7AC? yes.
That is a fine line, Rh, your example. I think perhaps a mixture of both. Running it lean so to speak, looking for that perfect ratio.
They disabled the mixture on 7ACs. It only runs rich.
You can double snap-roll a 7AC but the second one is more of a wide spin entry. Not enough power for two.
Having established that the tail does not come off, you can do them all day.
product reviews, well shoot, I'm in. I've been overwhelmed teaching a 4 week intensive the last month, and starting up again this next week. But I've got products I can review, Amazon Vine member here. The key for me would be to make sure that the products bounce into related conversations.
So, the only way to make that mixture work is at full throttle. Landing then must be, um, an adventure.
The power works fine. Close the throttle and it idles. Open it and it runs full power, such as it is.
I think ndspin hit on part of it ... (6:46)
"Playgrounds" are minus jungle gyms and any 'dangerous' equipment. Rowdy play is punished and behavior is being shaped to fit the female teachers' mean.
There was a park in my grandparent's town that I used to play in when I was a kid (and OMG unsupervised!!).
There was this fabulous set of flying rings (all metal). I could never finish it all the way to the end and back. (But I was a girl ....) Last time we went through the town the rings were no longer there ... OK, they would have probably worn out at some time in the past decades...
But there was nothing at all comparable, or as demanding, or ... 'dangerous.'
Little things like that being altered in the "culture" are big things.
Maybe we need to buy and give away copies of The Dangerous Book for Boys as a start.
10:13, agreed. Not neccesarily a stable approach, but one with a little adventure added, especially the first one. Forget the engine in the AC7, completely... a Franklin?
I'll start trying to notice whether any women are partaking.
Who writes like that?
Perhaps on topic. I did my first Scuba dive at 63. More since.
It is the Interstates which destroyed us.
There, my whacked out comment for the night.
I wonder if they controlled for age? The average age of most western countries is higher than it was 35 years ago. Older people do fewer risky things.
I believe it.
Video games.
JAL, I just read up on The Dangerous Book for Boys. I'll be buying a few copies for parents w/ young boys.
My kids' old school didn't let anyone run on the playground, because they might have run into each other. "Walking only, friends!"
The stupid, it buuuuuuuuuuurns!
I teach preschool now and take great satisfaction in allowing the boys to play rough on the playground if they so desire. And I mention in passing to other teachers that the kiddos are little tiger cubs and need to be allowed to play like tiger cubs. Occasionally I will ask the kids to, quote, take it down a notch, unquote, if it looks like someone might lose a tooth, but other than that, we let 'em rip.
I've never understood where this 'they might get hurt' thing comes from as though it were an actual meaningful objection. Some other mother told my kids, in front of me, to get out of the trees they were climbing for that reason. I smiled at her and said, "They're fine," and told them to go right back to what they were doing, and that getting hurt while playing is not a big deal.
Doing my part!
The 7AC has a Continental 65 engine.
I never did a stabilized approach, always landing out of the turn from base or out of a steep slip.
Always a wheel landing on the same spot.
It's funny until somebody loses an eye.
Then it's still funny, just not around that person.
- old boys' saying
The difference between Boy Scout camp and Girl Scout camp: at Boy Scout Camp you're allowed to run.
The difference between boys' baseball practice and girls' softball practice: with boys they will continue to practice and enjoy it in a light rain. With girls, the coaches will cancel practice on threat of rain.
rh, That's Not Funny!
Yes, Chip, trying to blame the percentage of female teacher neglects the fact that there were probably more female teachers 75 years ago. It's TV, video games, and other things I'm to lazy to think of right now.
Oh, yeah, Ritalin, et al.
Isn't there a correlation between risk-taking and testosterone levels?
@ nd -- hey -- don't forget to buy them from my Amazon store!!
(Haha I don't have a store. Just wanted to see how that looked in print.)
Actually, you could buy them through Lem's store! ;-)
One would assume, chick, but I would say intelligence plays a part, also. That is, calculated risk vs. jackass risk.
Misplaced Pants, I taught in a Catholic school, 5th-8th grade. I had the 8th grade for most subjects, except science, music and art. The only other man in the building was the maintenance guy. The nanny teachers had a fit when the 8th graders played rough during recess. I supervised them. It was just 8th grade boys w/ testosterone oozing through the pores of their skin. I had so many battles I eventually quit. The teachers started taking it out on the boys when I wasn't around. That's when I said adios. I felt like a quitter but I couldn't protect those boys all the time. This is a subject that boils my blood.
Christine Hoff Somers has written a few good books. The best is, The War on Boys. Maybe you've read her?
I agree with Chip. Video games.
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