Friends, porn, and punk: sensation seeking in personal relationships, Internet activities, and music preference among college students

Adolescence, Summer, 2004 by Robert S. Weisskirch, Laurel C. Murphy

Close relationships. We created four items to assess close and casual relationships. Two items assessed general level of friendship ("How many close friends do you have?" and "How many casual friends do you have?"), which were rated on a five-point Likert scale (1 = many to 5 = none). The other two items asked about specific number of friends ("If you had to estimate the number of close friends you currently have, how many would you say?" and "If you had to estimate the number of casual friends you currently have, how many would you say?"), with a blank space for participants to fill in a number.

RESULTS

The sample consisted of 45% freshmen, 32% sophomores, 14% juniors, and 8% seniors; 82% indicated living in campus residence halls, 8% in campus apartments, and 9% off campus. The sample reflected all types of majors; an overview revealed that 11.8% were in the arts, 11% in business, 11% in the humanities, 27% in science and technology, 27% in social sciences, and 12.5% undeclared.

Sensation Seeking

For this sample, total scores ranged from 36 to 72 (M = 55.31, SD = 6.47). For the Novelty subscale, the range was from 19 to 38 (M = 28.04, SD = 3.90). For the Intensity subscale, the range was from 17 to 39 (M = 27.19, SD = 4.35). Using a one-way ANOVA, males, as expected, scored significantly higher than females on total sensation seeking (M = 57.80 versus M = 53.38), F(1, 116) = 14.96, p < .001. There were similar patterns for the Novelty and Intensity subscales, F(1, 122) = 4.69,p < .005, and F(1,127) = 17.43,p < .001, respectively. There were no significant ethnic, major, year in school, or GPA differences on sensation seeking. In terms of residency, there was a significant difference, with those living in the residence halls having higher Intensity subscale scores than those living in campus apartments or off campus, F(2, 127) = 3.78, p = .02. However, this may have been due to a significant inverse relationship between age and the Intensity subscale, r = -.26, p = .003.

Friendships

Close and casual friendships varied widely for this sample. On the scaled item for close friends, 23% of the participants indicated they had many, 43% a fair amount, 23% a few, 9% very few, and 2% none. When asked to estimate the actual number, participants indicated from 0 to 80 close friends, with a mean of 7.4 (SD = 7.8, mode = 10). On the scaled item for casual friends, 65% of the participants indicated they had many, 27% had a fair amount, 5% a few, 2% very few, and 2% none. When asked to estimate the actual number, participants indicated from 1 to 400 casual friends, with a mean of 37.5 (SD = 60.5, mode = 20).

High sensation seeking (total scale) was related to having more close friends (scaled item), r = -.22, p = .017 (see Table 1). Similarly, the Intensity subscale was related to having more close friends (scaled item), r = -.17, p < .05. Further, there was a positive relationship between the number of close friends (estimated) and the Novelty subscale, r = .25, p < .01. High sensation seeking (total scale) was also related to having more casual friends (scaled item), r = -.22, p < .05. In addition, there was a positive relationship between the number of casual friends (estimated) and both total sensation seeking, r = .27, p < .01, and the Novelty subscale, r = .25, p < .05.