Sensation-Seeking and Risk-Taking Behaviors: A Study on Young Iranian Adults

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between sensation-seeking and risk-taking behaviors, to analyze the role of sensation seeking in the prediction of risk taking, and to investigate the role of gender on these constructs in a sample of young Iranian adults. The randomly selected sample consisted of 92 males and 208 females who came from the city of Eghlid, Fars province, Iran. A demographic questionnaire, the Sensation Seeking Scale-V Form (SSS-V) and the Domain-Specific Risk Taking Scale (DOSPERT) were used in this study. An exploratory factor analysis indicated that the DOSPERT is a valid and reliable 6-factor scale: social, recreational, gambling, health/safety, investing, and ethical. The results demonstrated that sensation seeking and its subscales had significant relationships to the DOSPERT and its subscales. Sensation seeking explained 16 % of the total risk-taking behavior variability. It was also found that males had significantly higher scores than females in both sensation-seeking and risk-taking behavior constructs.