The search for new sensations, its place and significance in the psychological self-realization lafi s.g. Thrill-Seeking Brain An example of sexual adrenaline addiction

Search for limiting beliefs by finding the place and time of occurrence of beliefs You already know that beliefs are formed during very strong emotions. Try to remember the maximum number of situations related to money that caused very strong emotions.

We tend to be excited by danger. In the 1970s, an experiment was conducted on monkeys, described in the book "Taboo or toy" ("Taboo or toy"). Several animals were placed in a cage with poles on which they could climb. The top of one of the poles was energized. When the monkey climbed onto it, she received a slight electric shock.

It turned out that it was this pillar that became the most popular. All the monkeys participating in the experiment expressed a desire to climb it. But when the electricity was turned off, the animals lost interest in it. As a result of the experiment, they concluded that monkeys seek excitement, even if its price is pain. They are looking for him in a sense of danger.

The physiologist Walter Cannon studied arousal in humans in the 1920s. He found that when a person is threatened, they have a "fight or flight" response.

We seek danger because it comes naturally to us. We do not crave peace, but excitement - including from risk

Experiments have shown that such arousal can also occur in the absence of a real physical threat, thanks to emotions alone. Take, for example, sex. Emotions cause sexual arousal, which, in turn, prepares the body for sexual activity.

Why do we crave the thrill of danger? According to psychologist Michael Epner, we seek danger because it comes naturally to us. Contrary to the opinion of Sigmund Freud, we crave not peace, but excitement - including from risk.

The search for danger not only brings us pleasure. It is necessary for the development of society: if some representatives of humanity did not try to achieve their goals no matter what, we would still live in caves.

The pleasure of risk serves as an additional natural incentive to come to the edge and make the jump. Through hundreds of generations, the pleasure of achieving such goals has become a thrill-seeking for their own sake.

How is the desire for danger regulated? Epter believed that humans have a mechanism to control the thrill-seeking. We have a protective structure related to our activity. At any moment we are in one of three zones.

A defense structure is a person's confidence in himself, in those who can help him, or in the fact that help is available.

Most of us live in a safe zone. But we also like the danger zone, even if sometimes we find ourselves in the trauma zone: like monkeys who liked to climb a pole, despite the electric shock that awaited them.

The choice of time during which we want to stay in the danger zone is regulated by a protective structure that separates the danger zone from the injury zone. Without a protective structure, we would experience only anxiety and fear that pain awaits us, and would avoid such situations. And we often strive for excitement to the most dangerous point.

“Defensive structure is a person's confidence in himself, in those who can help him, or that help is available,” explains Michael Epner. - This is what allows a person to take risks, but not face a real threat. After all, when things get dangerous, the protective structure serves as a kind of condom for the soul.

Lithuanian University of Education

Keywords

search for new sensations, search for thrills, risk, quality of life, sense of coherence, completeness of life, hardiness

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Annotation to the article

The article presents a theoretical analysis of the problem of searching for new sensations in conjunction with the problem of risk, resilience, a sense of coherence, fullness of life, quality of life, its place and significance in psychological self-realization. The search for new sensations is a basic human need, which involves implementation in society. Seeking new sensations is closely related to thrill seeking and risk taking. The purpose of the search for new sensations is also to receive feedback about oneself, self-affirmation, self-realization, self-development. On the other hand, the motives for seeking new sensations can be hedonistic. The propensity to search for new sensations is associated with an assessment of satisfaction with the quality of life, but this relationship is complex and indirect. The level or magnitude of the assessment of the quality of life itself does not determine the appearance of a greater propensity to seek new sensations. Empirical data arguing the author's point of view are presented and discussed.

Scientific article text

What determines the search for new sensations and what factors influence the severity of the desire to search for new sensations? With what psychological formations is the search for new sensations associated? How is the quality of life, the search for new sensations and the desire for risk connected? An irresistible desire to search for new sensations, and especially sensations associated with risk, is the lot of jaded natures and adventurers, or is it a quality inherent in everyone? Let's try to answer these questions. In 1975 M. Zuckerman described the general pattern of behavior associated with the propensity to seek impressions and defined it as "the need for various new impressions and experiences and the desire for physical social risk for the sake of these impressions." Currently, the search for sensations is defined as an element of the motivational-required sphere, the concept of which may include: the search for dangers and adventures; search for experiences; looseness and susceptibility to boredom. Sensation seeking is a personality trait expressed at the behavioral level, it is "a generalized tendency to seek out previously unexplored, diverse and intense sensations and experiences and expose oneself to physical risk for the sake of such sensory-emotional experience" . In space psychology, there is the concept of "sensory hunger", that is, the lack of stimuli coming to the brain from the external environment. It is known that IP Pavlov, who conducted many experiments on dogs in the Tower of Silence, came to the conclusion that for the normal functioning of the brain, constant charging by external nerve impulses coming from the sense organs through subcortical formations to the cortex is necessary. Experiments with human participation also showed that the monotony and monotony of impressions, in the absence of a sufficient influx of external stimuli, sharply reduced the energy level (tonus) of the cerebral cortex, which in some cases led to a violation of mental functions. As studies conducted in isolation chambers have shown, this hunger exposes the human psyche to a difficult test. Test pilot Yevgeny Tereshchenko, who participated in a 70-day experiment in a pressure chamber, wrote in his diary three weeks later “after the start”: “Watch, lunch, examination, sleep. Time has shrunk, shortened… One day is indistinguishable from another. Gradually, nervous fatigue began to creep up. We have become more irritable. It's getting harder to force yourself to work. More and more I wanted to open the door somewhere and see something else. It doesn't matter, as long as it's new. Sometimes painfully, to the point of pain in the eyes, I want to see a bright, definite, simple light of the spectrum or a crimson poster, a blue sky. Boredom". The basis of the orienting reaction, which is the basis of the mental, is the ability of a living being to correlate newly received stimuli with past experience. “The search for new and unfamiliar events is a fundamental behavioral tendency in humans and animals,” said Dr. Bianca Wittmann, a researcher at the Welcome Trust Center for Neurological Research at University College London. It makes sense to try new options, because in the end they can be very profitable.” It is the novelty of sensations, and not some other, “passing”, stimuli, that serves as a motivational factor that causes research activity. Currently, Brazilian scientists have obtained data that the need to search for new sensations is genetically determined. One of the variants (alleles) of the DRD4 gene enhances people's tendency to seek new experiences, impulsiveness and hyperactivity. After analyzing the distribution of DRD4 allele frequencies in South American Indians, Brazilian geneticists found that in tribes that in the recent past led a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the “adventurism gene” is more common than in sedentary peoples who have long been engaged in agriculture. Apparently, this gene provides an adaptive advantage in the nomadic lifestyle, and the transition to settled life makes its phenotypic manifestations more harmful than beneficial. Thus, the need to search for new sensations, on the one hand, is a basic need, even genetically determined, and, on the other hand, involves social realization (realization in society), which is the specificity of this need. The desire to experience new sensations on a psychological level is closely related to the desire for thrills and the desire for risk. Let's try to consider the existing terminology regarding these concepts. In psychology, risk is most often defined as "a situational characteristic of an activity, consisting in the uncertainty of its outcome and in the possible adverse consequences in case of failure." There are three approaches to understanding risk: 1) risk as a measure of the expected disadvantage in case of failure in activities; 2) risk as an action that threatens the subject with loss; 3) risk as a situation of choice between two possible options for action - less attractive, but more reliable, and more attractive, but less reliable. In the literature, quite often one can also find the concepts of "risk willingness" and "risk propensity". How do these concepts relate to each other? The concept of "risk propensity" includes the concept of dispositional personal risk as an individual property that distinguishes people's behavior in tasks of the same type; in the psychological research literature, it is associated with descriptions of characteristics associated with impulsivity (sometimes these terms substitute for each other) and reduced self-control. Often in the literature, “risk propensity” is used in the context of rash actions (unreasonable risk), the search for strong sensations, risk for the sake of risk as a special value. So, M.A. Kotik in his work “Psychology and Security” gives an example of a taxi driver who sometimes creates dangerous situations on the road in order to, in his own words, “shake it up”. The concept of "risk readiness" refers to the ability of the subject to make decisions in conditions of uncertainty as a lack of guidance; in this case, we can talk about the connection with the concept of rationality in decision-making. It is also important to correlate the concepts under consideration with “risk taking”, understood as “an act of integration at the level of self-awareness of the personality of motivational premises and representations of the properties of the situation”, as allowing oneself to act in a situation of uncertainty. A “risk situation” includes at least three elements: uncertainty of the event (risk is possible only when more than one outcome is possible); possibility - the probability and magnitude of the loss (at least one option may be undesirable); as well as significance for the subject (“price of risk”), that is, what the subject is willing to pay for the willingness to take risks - the expected amount of losses). The sources of uncertainty are manifold: the spontaneity of natural phenomena and natural disasters; human activity; mutual influence of people, which is uncertain and ambiguous; scientific and technical progress. The source of uncertainty is also internal and subjective factors. A situation of uncertainty forces a person to make a prediction about the probability of success or failure. The risk is subjective - the subject may not consider the situation as risky, although objectively it contains a certain degree of uncertainty; also, the perception of the situation by different subjects is different (a situation perceived by the subject as risky may be perceived by the observer as standard, and vice versa). The perception of the situation as risky depends on the individual - psychological, psycho-physiological, motivational - volitional characteristics of the subject; on the significance for him of the activity in which this situation arises, the place of this situation in the context of the activity, the role of the situational result in the process of achieving the goal of the activity. The goal of risk can be either achieving success in any business (risk for the sake of success), or a surge of adrenaline (risk for the sake of new sensations). Psychology, literature seeks to study both behaviors: when risk has positive consequences and when it has undesirable or dangerous consequences, such as reckless driving, smoking or risky sexual behavior. This literature notes that risk taking can "either be adaptive, adequate, or maladaptive, inadequate" and that risk takers can be seen as either "heroes" or "fools". Risk can also be motivated and unmotivated. We believe that positive risk is adaptive, brings certain benefits to the individual, stimulates the achievement of goals, and creates a sense of satisfaction. Negative risk is destructive, leads to the destruction and degradation of the individual. Motivated risk involves obtaining situational advantages in activities and is designed for situational advantages from the side making the risky decision. Unmotivated risk has no rational basis and manifests itself in the process of creativity or intellectual activity. V. A. Petrovsky, within the framework of the concept of non-adaptive risk, pointed to the relationship between the concepts of "risk" and "creativity". Human activity in a situation of risk not only "realizes the original, but also generates new life relations of the subject ...". He introduces the concept of "supra-situational activity" to denote the subject's tendency to act above the threshold of external or internal situational necessity. In conditions of uncertainty, this means that a person is able to take risks without extracting visible situational advantages. M.K. Mamardashvili connects the risk with the possibility of self-realization, with the actualization of a person's potential, which makes a person "accomplished in life, alive in it." An example of risk, which is a manifestation of self-realization, is the example of the famous British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, one of the ten geniuses of our time, who has a very difficult fate. At the age of 21, he was diagnosed with a terrible diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This is an incurable disease of the central nervous system, which in America is called Lou Gehrig's disease. Usually people with such a diagnosis do not live even a decade, but Hawking has been successfully fighting the disease for half a century. In recent years, the physicist has been confined to a wheelchair. A scientist on his own can only twitch his cheek. He communicates with people using a computer that converts his thoughts into monotonous "metal" speech. At the same time, the consciousness of the scientist is in perfect order. Despite a serious illness, he leads an active life. On April 26, 2007, he flew in zero gravity (on a special plane). Two years later, Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the government's highest honors for civilians. Thus, adequate or inadequate perception of risk, correct or erroneous assessment of risk factors is the most important element of the mechanism for the formation of behavioral strategies, on the basis of which a personal choice is made in relation to the implemented life strategy. In this article, we will use exactly this terminology: adequate or inadequate perception of risk, because. it most fully reflects the essence of the phenomenon under study in comparison with the terms of "positive" and "negative" risk, as well as constructive and destructive risk. Here are examples of adequate and inadequate risk perception. So, Lafi S.G. and Merkulova M.S. An attempt was made to investigate the professional success of managers in the context of risk appetite. It is known that readiness for risk occupies a significant place in the professional activity of a manager, since it allows to overcome the conditions of uncertainty, regulate decision-making processes, thereby acting as one of the personal determinants of the professional success of managers. From the point of view of the subject, the risk was considered by the authors as the discovery of a discrepancy between the required and available or potential capabilities in managing the situation, where the very assessment of one's own intellectual and personal potential of one's capabilities in decision-making was uncertain. Risk readiness acted as the ability to make a decision and act in a high-risk situation, which was a subjective regulator of personal involvement in a decision-making situation. In terms of content, readiness for risk manifested itself as an act of “trying on” by the subject of his capabilities to the given requirements of the situation (transforming the requirements of the situation or going beyond them). The overall average level of expert evaluation of the effectiveness of managers, as shown by the results of this study, was higher in the group of managers with a high risk appetite. The differences are statistically significant (p