Surfing: an avenue for socially acceptable risk-taking, satisfying needs for sensation seeking and experience seeking § Rebekah Diehm, Christine Armatas* School of Psychology at Deakin University, Geelong Campus, Pigdons Road, Geelong 3217, Australia Received 23 May 2002; received in revised form 17 December 2002; accepted 4 February 2003 Abstract Whether the personality characteristics of sensation seeking and openness to experience and participa- tion motives differ between participants in the high-risk sport of surfing (n=41) and participants in a low- risk sport (golf; n=44) was investigated. Multivariate analysis indicated that surfers are characterised by higher levels of sensation seeking, as measured by the Sensation Seeking Scale-V (Zuckerman, 1983) and Openness to Experience, as measured by the NEO-Personality Inventory Revised (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Surfers also demonstrated higher levels of Intrinsic Motivation, measured by the Sports Motivation Scale (Pelletier et al., 1995) than golfers, while both groups demonstrated similar levels of Extrinsic Motivation. These results suggest that personality factors, together with types of participation motives, may be useful in discriminating between participants in low- and high-risk sports, which in turn could be used to promote surfing as a positive risk-taking pursuit. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Sensation seeking; Experience seeking; Surfing; Risk-taking; Openness to Experience; Intrinsic motivation 1. Introduction What attracts particular individuals to take up a sporting activity is relevant to understanding the adoption of, and persistence with, a given sport. Among the many factors that may influence sport participation, individual personality characteristics and motives for participation have been identified as important variables. Research has found that participants in high-risk sports score 0191-8869/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00124-7 Personality and Individual Differences 36 (2004) 663–677 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid § The first author completed this work as part of the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree under the supervision of the second. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +61-352-27282; fax: +61-352-272021. E-mail address: armatas@deakin.edu.au (C. Armatas).