Abstract
Kenneth Carter’s Buzz! Inside the Minds of Thrill Seekers Daredevils and Adrenaline Junkies (2019) is a fun walk down the path of extreme sports psychology and sensation-seeking (HSS) personalities. He skillfully weaves personal stories and interviews of people who BASE jump, bullfight, and ice climb throughout his exploration of why people engage in such risky behaviors. With writing that is accessible and approachable, Buzz is an enjoyable overview of distinctive psychological personality traits and characteristics and an in-depth look at the motivation for risk-taking, flow, and HSS personalities.
Throughout the book, he uses an organized, logical structure to explore various aspects of this unique subset of individuals. His thorough approach guides readers through thinking about HSS personalities and the various realms of their personal life, including relationships, decision making, and general outlook. This fascinating exploration is useful for painting a holistic picture of this often misunderstood phenomenon. Examining implications for having a HSS personality on aspects of an individual’s life, Carter investigates what job they are likely to hold, how long their relationships last, and childhood events that may have led them down their path. The book explores how people with HSS personalities make decisions, including profession, life-partner choice, and even where they are likely to live.
Buzz covers a wide range of factors that both contribute to and stem from having a sensation-seeking personality. Are high sensation seekers born that way, or do they have life experiences that shape this trait? What motivates them to participate in ever more risky activities? These are some of the foundational questions that Carter explores in Buzz!. The consequences of this behavioral trait are also well explained in the latter part of the book. This includes attributes such as the quality and quantity of the work ethic and personality pitfalls such as a propensity for addiction and the likelihood for aggression (p. 151). Carter also discusses what types of jobs high sensation-seekers are likely to hold and what kinds of decisions they are likely to make regarding their own personal safety both in everyday life and while engaging in high-risk activities. Carter breaks down many myths about this unique group of people while exposing their true motivations, tendencies, and processes.
Considerable implications for outdoor and adventure education, recreation, and leisure scholars can be gleaned from this book. Buzz! will be a great text for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students interested in sensation seeking, flow, and leisure behavior. Questions like, what drives this subset of leisure participants to chase tornadoes or engage in solo attempts of El Capitan? are at the heart of this text and help paint a picture, not of an individual with a death wish, but of one that loves life and seeks meaningful experiences where they must perform at their highest level. The psychology behind these actions is an essential understanding for scholars in outdoor and adventure fields, especially those concerned with risk taking. Buzz provides a refreshing take on HSS personalities using a lens from the discipline of psychology to offer a fresh perspective on behaviors that happen throughout outdoor and adventure education, recreation, and leisure.
In summary, this book would be a great discussion piece for a graduate-level course on the psychological aspects of adventure focused on flow, risk, or sensation-seeking as well as other motivations for risk and the psychological constructs that contribute to this type of behavior. As a thoughtful addition, Buzz! includes discussion questions for each chapter for facilitating discussions with students. Furthermore, Carter has included the relevant instruments that he discusses throughout the book and added them as appendices for reference and analysis with your students. I plan to use this book in my next graduate course on adventure and risk to help my students understand HSS, the people who choose to engage in this behavior, and why they engage in these fascinating activities.
Carter expertly pulls from existing research in various fields and synthesizes this information in a reader-friendly way. The information presented is digestible both in its verbiage and how it is supported by personal stories, case studies, and literature from the field. I found Buzz! to be relevant to the outdoor recreator, the scholar, and those who enjoyed films like Free Solo or Touching the Void from their couch. Buzz! offers an accessible understanding of this hot topic.
