ABSTRACT
At the time the first Sensation Seeking Scale was being developed in the early 1960s, it was a peripheral issue to my primary experimental program in sensory deprivation. The main interest was in the situational factors affecting the phenomena of sensory deprivation; personality tests were given to subjects before some of the experiments to see ifthey could predict reactions under these particular conditions. My first inclination was to use tests of anxiety and psychopathology (Zuckerman, Albright, Marks, & Miller, 1962). As I became increasingly interested in the operant approach to sensory deprivation, my attention was focused on optimal level theories. Except for scales like "Need for Change" in the Edwards PPS, there seemed to be no individual difference measure based on the idea that people differ in their optimal levels of stimulation and arousal and that these differences influence their choices of life activities. I therefore decided to construct my own test.
