Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-16) Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- A job that requires frequent travel.
- To work in one place.
- Most people, overall, spend too much money on insurance.
- Insurance is something no one could afford to do without.
- I would not want to be hypnotized.
- I would like to try being hypnotized.
Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-16) Test - Description and methodology of the test
People who want to understand their appetite for novelty, stimulation, and uncertainty can use the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-16) Test as a brief self-report profile. A sensation seeking test can help organize preferences that appear in work, travel, music, social disagreement, money, and emotionally charged situations. The result is most useful when read as a tendency, not a fixed identity.
What This Assessment Explores
Rather than measuring one isolated act, the questionnaire samples choices involving unfamiliar experiences, physical intensity, uncertainty, sensory novelty, and restraint. Items contrast cautious options with alternatives that are faster, riskier, more unusual, or more emotionally expressive. A novelty seeking assessment can therefore illuminate a broad approach to stimulation across travel, music, disagreement, money, and everyday decisions.
The overall result is interpreted through these bands:
- Sensation Seeking: 0-16. Low 0-5 reflects greater stability and caution, Moderate 6-10 suggests balanced openness with regulation, and High 11-16 indicates stronger novelty seeking, risk taking, and pursuit of intense emotions.
- Items about unfamiliarity and intensity illustrate situations covered by the overall tendency, including new sensations, unusual activities, fast-paced experiences, or emotionally vivid situations.
- Items about uncertainty and restraint illustrate contrasting responses, including preferences for predictability, gradual adjustment, and safer choices when outcomes are unclear.
Methodology and Evidence Base
Each item uses a forced-choice format: two short statements present contrasting preferences, and the respondent selects the better fit. The wording covers activities, sensations, social interaction, personal opinions, and practical risk, so the method compares direction of preference rather than rating frequency or severity.
The questionnaire overlaps with the Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman, 1971) in novelty, risk taking, disinhibition, and intense experiences; uncertainty is an item theme, not a formal source dimension. It is not presented as a direct adaptation of that published instrument. Earlier development work by Zuckerman, Kolin, Price, and Zoob (1964) and later comparisons by Zuckerman, Eysenck, and Eysenck (1978) provide measurement context.
The presentation provides one overall result, while the online questionnaire is not standardised, provides no population norms or reliability estimates, and does not specify item-level weighting or the exact scoring procedure. The three result labels are descriptive bands within its scoring scheme, not validated clinical thresholds or fixed personality categories.
Self-report answers can shift with mood, current circumstances, self-awareness, and willingness to disclose preferences, so the profile is best read as a contextual snapshot.
- Zuckerman, M. (1971). Dimensions of sensation seeking. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 36(1), 45-52. 10.1037/h0030478
- Zuckerman, M., Eysenck, S. B., & Eysenck, H. J. (1978). Sensation seeking in England and America: Cross-cultural, age, and sex comparisons. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46(1), 139-149. 10.1037/0022-006X.46.1.139
- Zuckerman, M., Kolin, E. A., Price, L., & Zoob, I. (1964). Development of a sensation-seeking scale. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 28(6), 477-482. 10.1037/h0040995
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