Abstract
Emotions are a signaling system, evolved by providing selective advantage through enhanced survival and reproduction. The selective advantage conferred by thrill or exhilaration, however, remains unknown. Hypotheses, as yet untested, include overcoming phobias or honing physical skills as juveniles, or exhibiting desirability during mate selection. Extreme sports can provide an ethically and experimentally feasible tool to analyze thrill. To use this tool, extreme sports must first be defined in a non-circular way, independent of participant psychology. Existing concepts, from different disciplines, focus, respectively, on drama, activity types, or consequences of error. Here, I draw upon academic and popular literature, and autoethnographic experience, to distinguish extreme from adventurous levels for a range of different outdoor sports. I conclude that extreme outdoor adventure sports can be defined objectively as those activities, conditions, and levels, where participant survival relies on moment-by-moment skill, and any error is likely to prove fatal. This allows us to examine the motivations, experiences, and transformations of individuals who undertake these activities. In particular, it will allow us to examine the emotional experience of thrill, previously studied principally as an aspect of personality, from new neurophysiological and evolutionary perspectives.
Highlights
Why does thrill exist? Extreme sports can provide an analytical tool to answer that question
Outdoor adventure provides a tool to analyze the psychology of risk aversion. Can we extend this analysis to extreme adventure? Second, the evaluation of physical risk and reward has been a critical component of human history
Using multiple outdoor adventure activities, I attempt to identify characteristics specific to each of those activities, that would distinguish extreme from adventurous levels
Summary
Why does thrill exist? Extreme sports can provide an analytical tool to answer that question. We must first define extreme, in an outdoor sporting context. I propose this definition as a basis for future analysis of thrill, using participants in extreme sports as experimental subjects. Human emotions can be studied from many different perspectives. There is extensive research on: recognition and classification (Johnson-Laird and Oatley, 1989; Oatley et al, 2006); behavioral antecedents and outcomes, differences related to individual personalities, and social roles and functions (Turner and Stets, 2006; Niedenthal and Brauer, 2012); biochemistry, physiology, and neurology (Mujica-Parodi et al, 2014; Orsini et al, 2015; McAllister and Nichols, 2018); and in some cases, selective advantages and evolutionary origins (Tooby and Cosmides, 1990; Nesse and Ellsworth, 2009; Sandseter and Kennair, 2011; LeDoux, 2012; Verma et al, 2016; Pacella et al, 2017)
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