Boredom Susceptibility (BS)
The items express an intolerance for routine work and boring people. The quality of excitement is valued
above reliability in people. There is an expressed need for change and unpredictability in stimulation.
These four facets have been widely replicated in factor analyses of the SSS in other countries and different lan-
guages (e.g., Zuckerman, 1994, 2007 ). The facets were moderately intercorrelated as we would expect from a hier-
archal model. However some of the correlations were too high indicating a lack of discriminant validity. There
were an unequal number of items in the four facets. Because the General scale was not representative of some of
the facets, particularly disinhibition, it was decided to construct a new form with an equal number of items in
each of the four factors, retaining the items with the best convergent (correlation with their own factor) and
divergent validity. This would enable us to use a total score in place of the General scale. The total of the four
facets would have content validity in the sense of a balance between the content facets that came out of the factor
analysis. A second aim was to reduce the number of items in the scale from 72 to 40 by selecting the best 10 items
for each of the four subfactors. After these successive revisions, Form V of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-V)
was constructed. Forms V and VI of the Sensation Seeking Scales are available in the appendices of Zuckerman
(1994) . In this chapter we describe subsequent SS scales developed as part of a five-factor theory.
Zuckerman has been working on the Sensation Seeking construct for 50 years and the SSS has evolved from
the first version published in the 1960s to the last measure called Zuckerman /C0Kuhlman /C0Aluja Personality
Questionnaire (Aluja et al., 2010). Zuckerman also constructed an additional measure to evaluate the states of sen-
sation seeking and anxiety in risky situations named Sensation Seeking and Anxiety States Scales (SSAST). The
SSAST has 36 adjective items and two factors, including positive-affect SS items and anxiety negative-affect items.
The scale, scoring keys and psychometric properties are available in the appendices of Zuckerman’s (1994) book.
Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS Form V)
(Zuckerman, 1994 ).
Variable
The SSS (Form V) measures the following variables: Thrill and Adventure Seeking, Experience Seeking,
Disinhibition, and Boredom Susceptibility.
Description
In the late 1970s, Zuckerman collaborated with Hans and Sybil Eysenck in the development of the SSS-V using
a large twin sample in England ( Zuckerman, 1994 ). This offered the combined advantage of getting a large com-
munity sample in place of the university samples previously used in scale development and undertaking a
genetic analysis of the new scales. An American sample of university students was also used.
The items from the SSS-IV were administered to the participants and independent principal components anal-
yses were conducted in four samples consisting of American and English males and females. Principal compo-
nents analyses with both oblique and orthogonal rotations were used. The results for the oblique rotation were
very similar so the results from the orthogonal rotations so the orthogonal were used for scale development.
The same four dimensions found in Form IV were also found in each of the four samples. Form V was obtained
by the selection of the best 10 items in each subscale. The 10 highest loaded items for each factor in all four
samples were selected for the new 10-item scales: Thrill and adventure seeking (TAS), Experience seeking (ES),
Disinhibition (Dis), and Boredom susceptibility (BS). Some items were removed because they had nearly equal
loadings on other components. This reduced the intercorrelations among the four subscales as compared with
those in Form IV, but the correlations still justified calculation of a Total score based on the sum of the four sub-
scales. The clearest component was TAS since almost all items had a loading larger than 0.30. ES and Dis sub-
scales also showed a similar good fit. On the other hand, BS presented the least satisfactory structure. The
structure of the SSS-V has been replicated in various countries and cultures, including: Australia, Israel, Canada,
England, and Spain. The Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V) is one of the most widely used of the sensation seek-
ing scales (see revision by Aluja, Garcı ´a, & Garcı ´a, 2004 ).
Sample
The English sample comprised 254 males and 639 females from the Maudsley Twin Register, aged 15 /C070
years. The American sample consisted of 97 male and female undergraduates.357 OVERVIEW OF THE MEASURES
III. EMOTION REGULATION