Sensation-seeking behavior and the incidence of spinal cord injury

Professionals in the rehabilitation field differ in their conceptualization of the role of premorbid personality factors as related to risk behavior and incidence of traumatic injury. Some hold that specific premorbid personality traits can be identified for the spinal cord injured population; others argue that no one personality trait or specific combination of traits is descriptive of this heterogeneous population. This study explores the relationship between the sensation-seeking behavioral patterns and incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). The Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS) was administered to 56 patients with spinal cord injury (50 males and 6 females) between the ages of 16 and 50. A description of the incident causing injury was obtained for all 56 patients and subsequently rated by non-medical judges on a dimension of prudence-imprudence. No significant correlations were found between sensation-seeking scores and rated prudence of onset of injury, and sensation-seeking scores were no higher for SCI patients than for a comparable normal population. These findings indicate that spinal cord injury is not related to sensation-seeking, and, more generally, support the view that no premorbid personality trait distinguishes the SCI population from the normal.