Adventurous People: Their 7 Traits and Characteristics

The plan was a quiet Saturday. By noon, Lena has booked a one-way train to a town she can’t pronounce, shoved a toothbrush into a backpack and texted her sister a photo of the departure board with three exclamation marks. Her friends call it impulsive. Her mother calls it worrying. Lena calls it Tuesday, if Tuesdays came every Saturday. What none of them notice is the lists in her phone, the offline map downloaded the night before, and the careful way she checked the return fare. Her friends keep waiting for the day her luck runs out. It hasn’t, mostly because it was never luck. She isn’t reckless. She’s wired, trained and tuned for something else.

That something else is what we loosely call adventurousness, and it’s more interesting than the bungee-jumping cliché suggests. Adventurous people aren’t simply thrill junkies or people without fear. Psychologists find a cluster of personality traits, some inherited and some learned, that include curiosity, tolerance for uncertainty, confidence in one’s ability to cope, and a surprisingly sophisticated way of judging risk. Adventure also gets oversold, as though anyone who isn’t hanging off a cliff by noon has failed some personality test, which is nonsense. Some adventurers climb cliffs. Others change careers at forty, learn a language in a foreign city or simply say yes to the odd invitation.

Daring is mostly a skill set.

This article lays out seven traits and characteristics of adventurous people, what research says about each, where the edges are, and how to grow the useful parts without gambling your life or your savings.

Who counts as an adventurous person?

An adventurous person is someone who actively seeks novel, challenging or uncertain experiences and is willing to accept some risk to have them. The experiences may be physical (climbing, travel), intellectual (learning something hard), social (meeting strangers) or personal (changing direction in life).

Notice that the definition covers more than extreme sports. The psychology literature separates several overlapping tendencies: openness to experience, sensation seeking, curiosity, novelty seeking and the more everyday willingness to try new things. A person can score high on one and low on another. A quiet novelist who spends years in unfamiliar archives may be intensely curious and open without ever wanting a roller coaster. A motocross rider may crave speed but dislike new foods and unfamiliar conversation.

This is why one sentence won’t describe all adventurous people, and why the seven traits below should be read as a toolkit that different people hold in different proportions.

The seven traits we’ll cover:

1. Openness to experience: a broad appetite for new ideas, places and activities.
2. Sensation seeking: a taste for intense, varied sensations and a willingness to take risks for them.
3. Curiosity: an active drive to explore and a comfort with the unknown.
4. Low boredom tolerance: a restlessness with routine, tied to the novelty-seeking temperament.
5. Self-efficacy: a belief that “I can handle whatever turns up.”
6. Calibrated risk perception: a skilled, not naive, way of weighing danger.
7. Flow and meaning seeking: a pull toward absorbing, purposeful challenge.

Take Diego, an illustrative composite who spends his weekends rock climbing. He has the sensation-seeking trait and the self-efficacy. But his friends know him as the person who checks the rope twice and calls off a route if the weather turns. His risk perception is sharper than most people’s, which is why he’s still climbing after fifteen years.

It also helps to notice what adventurousness is not. It’s not the same as impulsivity, which is acting without thinking. It’s not the same as a death wish, or as a need to prove something, though those can overlap in some people. And it’s not a moral virtue: adventurous people can be generous or selfish, brave or careless.

Is it good to be adventurous? Mostly, if the risks are chosen, understood and survivable. We’ll come back to the edges.

Trait one: Why are adventurous people so open to new experiences?

Because openness to experience, one of the Big Five personality dimensions, is exactly the appetite for novelty, variety and unfamiliar ideas that drives adventurousness. Most adventurous people score high on it, though high openness alone doesn’t make someone a thrill seeker.

The Big Five framework, which describes personality along five broad dimensions, was refined and tested across cultures by Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa Jr. In a 1997 paper in American Psychologist, McCrae and Costa argued that the five-factor structure appears across a wide range of cultures, which suggests it reflects something basic about human personality. The five are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Within openness, the NEO inventories describe six facets: fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas and values. The facet called actions is the most relevant here. People high on it prefer new activities, foreign foods and unfamiliar routes over the familiar. The facet called ideas describes intellectual curiosity. A person can be high in one and low in another.

So an adventurous traveler might score high on actions but moderate on ideas, while a scholar who wanders through philosophy might do the opposite. Both are “open.” Both would describe themselves as adventurous in different arenas.

Openness also shapes how people respond to the unfamiliar. Those high on it tend to treat novelty as interesting; those low on it tend to treat it as a threat. The same unexpected detour is a story in one mind and a problem in the other.

Imagine Aiko, an illustrative composite and a software tester who has never lived outside her home city. She’s high in openness: she reads widely, tries unfamiliar cuisines, enjoys arguing about ideas. When a job offer comes from another continent, she finds herself saying yes within a day. Her friends are surprised. People who know her well aren’t.

Openness has well-known correlates: creativity, interest in the arts, liberal-leaning values on average and a taste for variety. It’s also associated with a greater likelihood of travel and career change. Like all personality dimensions, though, it’s partly stable and partly shifting; people tend to change a little over the life course, and experiences, therapy and deliberate effort can nudge it.

A limit worth stating: personality measures rely on self-report and capture tendencies, not destiny. A moderately open person can do bold things, and a very open person can lead a surprisingly routine life.

The practical point is simple. If adventure feels natural to you, you probably have a high openness profile. If it doesn’t, you can still borrow the behaviors.

Trait two: What is sensation seeking, and how is it different from adventurousness?

Blunt version: sensation seeking is the thrill-and-novelty side of adventurousness, and it can go well or badly. It’s the need for varied, novel, intense experiences and the willingness to accept risk to get them. Many adventurous people have it. Not all of them do.

Marvin Zuckerman, the psychologist who developed the concept, defined sensation seeking as the seeking of varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. He built the Sensation Seeking Scale to measure it, a 40-item questionnaire with four subscales.

Look at that table carefully. Only two of the four subscales, thrill and adventure seeking and experience seeking, line up with what most people mean by “adventurous.” Disinhibition is a different animal, associated with substance use and risky social behavior. Boredom susceptibility has more to do with restlessness. So “sensation seeker” and “adventurer” overlap but aren’t synonyms.

Several patterns are consistently reported. Sensation seeking tends to peak in the late teens and early twenties and then declines with age. On average, men score higher than women on thrill and adventure seeking and on disinhibition, though differences are modest and overlap is large. Sensation seeking is moderately stable across adulthood but can change.

Zuckerman also proposed a biological basis, arguing that sensation seekers may have an optimal level of arousal that is higher than others’, so ordinary situations feel under-stimulating. Evidence for specific neurochemical mechanisms has been mixed, and this is one area where early theory has been refined and in part revised.

Consider Sam, an illustrative composite who is a paramedic and a weekend whitewater kayaker. He’s high on thrill and adventure seeking but low on disinhibition: he doesn’t drink much and is a careful planner. Next to him, his friend Cal scores high on both, and a long run of risky choices has already cost him a car and a job. Same trait cluster, very different outcomes.

That’s the central caution. Sensation seeking is linked with risky driving, substance use and gambling in some people, particularly when combined with impulsivity and low self-control. The trait itself isn’t the problem; the lack of brakes is.

So when you ask “am I adventurous?” it’s worth asking a second question: do I have good brakes?

Trait three: Why does curiosity drive adventure?

Because curiosity is the engine that makes the unknown attractive instead of frightening. Adventurous people tend to see uncertainty as a source of information and interest, not just danger, and that stance pulls them toward new places, people and problems.

The psychologist Todd B. Kashdan and colleagues developed the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II, a 10-item questionnaire published in 2009. Factor analysis of the scale revealed two dimensions. The first is stretching: the motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences. The second is embracing: a willingness to accept the novel, uncertain and unpredictable nature of everyday life.

That second dimension is the quiet hero of this article. Many people are curious in the sense of liking to learn. Fewer are comfortable with the fact that new things come with unpredictability. Adventurous people tend to score well on both. They enjoy finding out and they tolerate not knowing how it will turn out.

Curiosity has several documented companions. In Kashdan’s research, curiosity is associated with higher well-being, more positive emotions and greater engagement in life. It’s also linked with learning, since novel information is better remembered when we’re curious about it. The causal arrows are hard to pin down: curious people may seek more positive experiences, or positive experiences may fuel curiosity.

Think of Maribel, an illustrative composite who has just moved to a new city for work. On her first weekend she takes a bus to the end of the line to see what’s there. She has no plan and no reason except interest. She comes home with a story, a recipe and a bakery she’ll visit for years. She would say that nothing happened. Curious people produce this sort of nothing constantly.

Curiosity can also be trained, at least to a degree. Practices that tend to help include asking more questions, pausing before dismissing something unfamiliar, taking a different route, reading outside your field and talking to people unlike you. The effect isn’t dramatic, but it compounds.

There’s a flip side. Curiosity has costs: time, distraction, sometimes risk. A person who is endlessly curious may struggle to finish things. And in some settings, such as a hospital or an airplane cockpit, discipline matters more than curiosity. Adventurous people who thrive tend to know when to switch it off.

A caveat on research: curiosity scales rely on self-report, and the distinction between curiosity and related traits like openness is blurry. They’re not identical, but they overlap a lot.

Ask yourself: when something unfamiliar appears, is your first impulse to step toward it or back away?

Trait four: Do adventurous people get bored easily?

Often, yes. A low tolerance for monotony is common among adventurous people, and it’s tied to a temperament that psychologists call novelty seeking. It isn’t laziness or flightiness. It’s a pull toward new stimulation that makes repetition feel flat.

The American psychiatrist C. Robert Cloninger proposed in a 1987 paper in Archives of General Psychiatry a model of personality built around inherited temperaments. One of them is novelty seeking, described as a heritable tendency toward exploratory activity in response to novel stimulation, impulsive decision-making, extravagance in approaching cues of reward and quick loss of temper. Cloninger hypothesized that this temperament reflects activity in the brain’s dopamine systems, which respond to novelty and reward.

That neurochemical idea has been influential and also contested. Researchers have looked for links between novelty seeking and variations in dopamine-related genes, such as the DRD4 gene, with inconsistent results. Large analyses have found weak or no consistent association, which reminds us that complex behavior rarely maps onto a single gene. Treat claims about an “adventure gene” with plenty of skepticism.

What’s not controversial is the experience. People high in novelty seeking tend to find repetition draining. They start projects eagerly and can lose interest when the novelty fades. They move jobs, hobbies and sometimes relationships more often. They’re drawn to variety and are often excellent at launching things.

Picture Priyanka, an illustrative composite who has held six jobs in ten years, each one fascinating for eighteen months. Her résumé looks scattered to some employers, though she has become the person organizations call when they need a team built from scratch. The trait is the same: it costs her in some settings and pays in others.

The same tendency can be a vulnerability. High boredom susceptibility is associated in some research with risky behaviors and difficulty sticking with long projects. People who are novelty seeking and impulsive may be at higher risk for gambling, substance use or unstable patterns. That doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s worth knowing about.

How do adventurous people manage it? Common strategies include building variety into routines, breaking long projects into phases with new challenges, partnering with someone who enjoys maintenance tasks, and choosing careers with natural novelty such as consulting, journalism, medicine on the move, teaching, or startup work.

If this describes you, a useful reframe is that boredom is information. It may signal that you need a fresh challenge, or it may signal that the project is in its dull middle phase where all projects live. Knowing which is the skill.

Trait five: Why do adventurous people believe they can handle what comes?

They have strong self-efficacy, a confident belief in their ability to cope with and master challenges. This isn’t blind optimism. It’s a belief built on experience, and it makes uncertain situations look manageable instead of menacing.

The concept comes from Albert Bandura, who proposed in a 1977 paper in Psychological Review that people’s beliefs about their own capabilities strongly shape what they attempt, how hard they try and how long they persist when things get difficult. He called this self-efficacy. Someone with high self-efficacy for a particular task tends to take on harder challenges, put in more effort and recover faster from setbacks.

Bandura identified four main sources of self-efficacy:

• Mastery experiences: actually doing the thing and succeeding, the strongest source.
• Vicarious experience: watching someone similar to you succeed.
• Verbal persuasion: being encouraged by people whose judgment you trust.
• Physiological and emotional states: reading your own arousal as readiness instead of fear.

That list is a recipe for how adventurers are made. Small successes, such as a first solo trip, a first overnight hike or a first presentation, build confidence that transfers. A person who has navigated a foreign airport alone is likelier to try a foreign city. Confidence is built by doing, in manageable steps.

Note that self-efficacy is domain-specific. You can feel highly capable on a mountain and helpless at a party. Adventurous people often have high self-efficacy in the domains they pursue and ordinary or low confidence elsewhere. The trait is a pattern of domain-specific beliefs.

Take Joon, an illustrative composite who’s never been camping. On his first trip he is nervous and awkward; the second time he knows how to pitch the tent; by the fifth, he’s the person who brings extra gear for beginners. Each success added to a growing belief: I can figure this out.

The belief also acts as a buffer. When something goes wrong, someone with high self-efficacy asks “what can I do?” while someone with low self-efficacy asks “why me?” That difference changes the experience of the same mishap.

A caution: confidence isn’t the same as competence. Overconfidence, particularly when paired with sensation seeking, can lead people to underestimate danger. The ideal is calibrated confidence, a belief that matches actual skill. That’s the focus of the next section.

If you want to feel more adventurous, begin with small, winnable stretches and accumulate evidence.

Trait six: Are adventurous people really risk lovers, or just better at judging risk?

Often the second. Many experienced adventurers are not careless but are skilled at risk perception: they gather information, prepare, respect conditions and know their limits. The popular image of the reckless daredevil describes only a minority.

The key research on how people judge danger comes from Paul Slovic, whose 1987 paper in Science, titled Perception of Risk, summarized decades of work. He found that lay judgments of risk are shaped by factors beyond statistics. Two stand out: dread risk (how catastrophic, uncontrollable and frightening a hazard feels) and unknown risk (how new, unobservable or poorly understood it is). Risks that score high on these dimensions feel far worse than their numbers justify, while familiar, voluntary risks feel milder.

That helps explain adventurous behavior. A rock climber feels in control: the risk is voluntary, familiar and skill-dependent. Driving to the trailhead may be statistically more dangerous but feels routine. For the adventurer, the risks they take score low on dread and unknown, because they’ve trained their way out of both.

The psychologist Frank Farley coined the term Type T personality, with T standing for thrill, to describe people who seek high levels of stimulation and risk. In his 1986 article in Psychology Today, he suggested that Type T can take positive forms (creativity, exploration, innovation) and negative ones (crime, reckless behavior), and that “big T” and “little t” describe the degree of thrill seeking. The framework is more popular than rigorously tested, but the central idea, that the same thrill-seeking drive can be channeled constructively or destructively, is widely accepted.

Think of two mountaineers. One checks forecasts, turns back near the summit when conditions change and has trained for years. The other ignores the weather because he’s emotionally committed to the peak. Both are adventurous. Only one is calibrated.

What does calibration look like? It includes preparation (route planning, gear, training), information (forecasts, local knowledge), margins (buffer time, conservative decisions), clear turn-around rules set in advance, and honesty about skill level. Many fatal adventure accidents involve ignoring those rules under emotional pressure, a pattern sometimes called summit fever.

The best adventurers I know describe themselves as cautious people who do unusual things. That isn’t contradictory. It’s a feature.

A word of honesty: research on Type T and similar constructs is mixed, and some studies find that risk-takers underestimate danger more than they admit. Real-world adventure involves both calibrated and uncalibrated people, and you can’t always tell them apart from outside.

If you want to be adventurous and stay alive, practice the unglamorous parts: preparation, humility and a pre-agreed way to turn back.

Trait seven: Why do adventurous people chase flow and meaning?

Because flow, the state of being completely absorbed in a challenging activity, is one of the most rewarding experiences people report, and adventure activities are efficient ways to produce it. Many adventurers describe the feeling of total focus as the real prize, more than the thrill itself.

The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the idea after interviewing rock climbers, chess players, surgeons, dancers and others who described similar states of absorption. In his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he described flow as occurring when a person’s skills are well matched to the difficulty of a challenge, goals are clear, feedback is immediate, and attention is fully engaged. Self-consciousness fades, time distorts, and the activity feels rewarding in itself.

The conditions explain why adventure works. A climbing route has clear goals (reach the top), immediate feedback (the rock tells you whether your move worked) and a challenge that can be adjusted to skill. Whitewater, surfing, trail running and improvisational music have similar structure. The key is the match: too easy and you’re bored, too hard and you’re anxious, just right and you’re in flow.

This matters because it separates the thrill-seeking view of adventure from a more positive one. Many adventurous people aren’t chasing adrenaline. They’re chasing absorption, mastery and the sense of being fully alive, and some also seek meaning: a story, a sense of growth, a feeling of having stretched themselves.

Take Rosalind, an illustrative composite who has never liked extreme sports but takes up long-distance trail running in her forties. The first months are hard. By the second year, she describes long runs as the only time her mind goes quiet. She isn’t chasing danger. She’s chasing the state.

Flow isn’t limited to physical adventure. Writers, programmers, cooks, gardeners and mechanics report it. An “adventure” in this sense can be any activity with scalable challenge and real feedback.

A caveat. Flow is a descriptive concept based largely on self-reports and experience sampling, and some researchers question how sharply flow can be distinguished from other states of engagement. And chasing flow can become a problem if it crowds out relationships, work or health. Even good pursuits can become avoidance.

The practical insight is that adventurousness doesn’t have to mean extremity. If you choose challenges that match your skill and give clear feedback, you can find the core experience without the cliff edge.

Where does adventurousness come from: nature, nurture or age?

All three. Twin and family studies suggest that traits like sensation seeking and openness are moderately heritable, but life experience, culture, parenting and age shape them considerably. Adventurousness is a trait with a biological starting point, not a fixed destiny.

Start with age. Laurence Steinberg, in a 2008 review in Developmental Review, laid out a dual-systems account of adolescent risk-taking: the brain’s socioemotional system, which is sensitive to rewards and novelty, becomes highly active around puberty, while the cognitive control system that helps regulate impulses matures more gradually through the early twenties. The result is a period of heightened reward-seeking with immature brakes. Sensation seeking rises into mid-adolescence and then generally declines through adulthood.

That fits with everyday observation. Teenagers and young adults are overrepresented in risk-taking, from reckless driving to extreme sports. It also fits with the observation that many people become more cautious after having children, taking on responsibilities or experiencing a scare.

Genes contribute, but modestly and diffusely. Studies of twins suggest a substantial heritable component for sensation seeking, often estimated around half, though numbers vary by study and measure. As noted earlier, searches for single “adventure genes” have been disappointing. The picture is polygenic: many small influences, interacting with environment.

Environment matters in several ways. Children who are allowed to explore, climb, get lost for a bit and recover tend to build confidence and risk-handling skills. Overprotection can reduce opportunities to build self-efficacy. Culture matters too: some societies celebrate exploration and individual daring while others prioritize caution and group harmony.

Picture two siblings, one with a naturally high thrill-seeking temperament and one with a low one. Raised in the same house, the first still bolts up the tallest tree while the second watches. But the second, encouraged gently, may grow into a cautious traveler and an enthusiastic cook of unfamiliar dishes. Temperament sets a starting point; experience steers it.

Can adults become more adventurous? Evidence suggests that personality traits, including openness, shift modestly over adulthood, and that intentional changes in behavior can contribute over time. You don’t need to become a different person. You can widen your range.

That’s encouraging if you feel your adventurousness is low. It’s also a reminder, if you feel it’s high, that your tastes may shift with age and circumstance, which is normal and not a loss.

How can you become more adventurous without being reckless?

Start small, build competence, prepare for the downside and stretch gradually. Adventurousness grows through repeated, survivable challenges, not through one dramatic leap, and the safest adventurers tend to be the best prepared.

Here are five steps that follow from the research above:

• Choose a stretch, not a leap. Pick something slightly outside your comfort zone, such as a new route, a solo lunch in an unfamiliar place or a beginner class, and do it this week.
• Build mastery in stages. Each success raises self-efficacy. Plan a ladder: day hike, overnight, weekend trip.
• Prepare for the downside. Decide in advance what could go wrong, what you’ll do about it and what would make you turn back.
• Cultivate curiosity daily. Ask one more question, talk to one unfamiliar person, take one different path.
• Debrief afterward. Note what you learned and what you’d adjust. Reflection turns experiences into skill.

If you’re already adventurous, the work runs the other way: strengthen the brakes. Learn the proper skills for your activity. Climb or dive with experienced partners. Respect conditions. Avoid mixing risk with alcohol or fatigue. Set turn-around rules before you’re emotional.

Watch for warning signs that adventurousness has tipped into something else: taking escalating risks to feel anything at all; repeated injuries or close calls that you brush off; spending or gambling beyond your means; using adventure to avoid grief, relationships or problems; or impulsive choices that harm others. Sudden bursts of risky behavior along with markedly reduced need for sleep and racing thoughts can sometimes signal a mood episode and warrant a medical assessment. Impulsivity linked with ADHD, substance use or gambling problems also benefits from professional help.

A psychologist or licensed counselor can help if your risk-taking is causing harm or if fear is keeping you from the life you want. A primary care doctor (a GP in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) can rule out medical contributors and refer you onward.

Imagine Jonah, an illustrative composite who has always played it safe. He starts with a Saturday hike with a group, then a weekend away, then a language class. A year later he describes himself as “someone who goes places.” He didn’t change his personality. He changed his evidence about himself.

That’s really the whole secret. Adventurous people aren’t braver at the start. They’ve simply collected more proof that they can cope.

What’s one small stretch you could take before the weekend?

FAQs about Adventurous People and Their Traits

What are the main characteristics of adventurous people?

Adventurous people typically show high openness to experience, a taste for novelty and sometimes intense sensations, strong curiosity, low tolerance for monotony, confidence in their ability to cope, skilled risk judgment and a pull toward absorbing challenges. Not every adventurous person has all of these, and the mix varies: some are thrill seekers, others are intellectual explorers or career changers. The characteristics are best seen as a toolkit held in different proportions. Adventurousness isn’t the same as recklessness, since many experienced adventurers are careful planners who respect their limits. That mix also explains why two adventurous friends can have wildly different weekends, and why neither is doing it wrong. What they share is a willingness to step toward the unfamiliar when most people would hold back.

Is being adventurous a personality trait?

Partly. Adventurousness overlaps with several well-studied traits, including openness to experience in the Big Five, sensation seeking and trait curiosity. These traits are moderately stable and partly heritable, but they also change with age, experience and deliberate effort. Adventurousness isn’t a single scientific construct, so researchers study its components separately. Someone can be adventurous in one area, such as travel, and cautious in another, such as finances. That flexibility is one reason the trait can be developed. Because the construct is loose, any claim that adventurousness is simply one thing, such as courage or a thrill-seeking gene, should be treated with caution.

What is the difference between sensation seeking and being adventurous?

Sensation seeking is a specific trait, defined by Marvin Zuckerman as the need for varied, novel, complex and intense experiences and the willingness to take risks for them. It has four parts: thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility. Being adventurous is a broader, looser idea that can include sensation seeking but also curiosity, openness and confidence. Someone who loves travel and new ideas may be adventurous without craving physical danger, while someone high in disinhibition may chase stimulation through risky social behavior that most people wouldn’t call adventurous. Zuckerman’s scale is still widely used in research, and its subscales are a handy way to describe which kind of stimulation appeals to you, while remembering that scores describe tendencies, not destiny.

Are adventurous people more likely to take dangerous risks?

On average, people high in sensation seeking are more likely to engage in risky activities such as fast driving, extreme sports, substance use or gambling, though the link varies and depends on impulsivity and self-control. Many adventurous people are not reckless, because they prepare, train and set limits, and their risks are chosen and understood. The danger zone tends to be the combination of high thrill seeking, impulsivity and overconfidence. If risk-taking is escalating, causing repeated injuries or harming others, a professional assessment is worth considering. It helps to remember that preparation and honesty about skill are what separate experienced adventurers from reckless ones, and they’re learnable.

Does adventurousness decrease with age?

On average, yes. Sensation seeking tends to rise into adolescence, peak in the late teens or early twenties and decline gradually afterward, partly because the brain’s self-regulation systems mature and partly because life responsibilities change. Openness to new ideas can stay fairly stable or decline slowly. These are averages: many people remain highly adventurous into later life, and some become more adventurous after retirement or major life changes. The form often shifts too, from physical thrills toward travel, learning and exploration. Cultural expectations matter too, since in some places older adults are encouraged to keep exploring, while in others daring is considered the privilege of the young.

Can you learn to be more adventurous?

Yes, to a meaningful degree. You may not change your underlying temperament, but you can widen your behavior. Small, repeated stretches build self-efficacy, which Albert Bandura identified as central to taking on challenges. Practicing curiosity, such as asking questions and trying unfamiliar things, also helps. Choose challenges that are slightly beyond your comfort level, prepare for the downside and reflect afterward. Progress tends to be gradual. If fear or anxiety is the main barrier, a therapist can help with approaches such as gradual exposure. Practice and encouragement from people you trust also help, since Bandura’s research suggests that watching similar people succeed and hearing credible support add to your own confidence.

Is there an adventure gene?

No single gene explains adventurousness. Early research linked novelty seeking to variants of the dopamine-related DRD4 gene, which captured public attention, but larger analyses found weak or inconsistent associations. Twin studies suggest that traits like sensation seeking are moderately heritable, but the genetic influence appears to be spread across many genes with small effects, interacting with upbringing and experience. Headlines promising an adventure gene oversimplify. Biology gives a starting tendency, and environment, learning and choices shape what it becomes. The more careful summary is that biology contributes a starting tendency and the rest is built by experience, culture and choices, many of which are within your control.

Are adventurous people happier?

Some research suggests that traits like curiosity and openness are associated with greater well-being, more positive emotions and a sense of engagement, but the evidence is correlational and mixed. Adventurous activities can produce strong positive experiences, including flow and a sense of mastery. At the same time, high thrill seeking is linked with higher rates of certain harms in some people. Happiness appears to depend less on how adventurous you are than on whether your level of adventure fits your temperament, your values and your circumstances. What seems to matter most is fit: a life with enough novelty and challenge for your temperament, and enough stability that you aren’t constantly paying for your own risks.

Bibliography

• Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.
• Cloninger, C. R. (1987). A systematic method for clinical description and classification of personality variants: A proposal. Archives of General Psychiatry, 44(6), 573-588.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
• Farley, F. (1986). The big T in personality. Psychology Today, 20(5), 44-52.
• Kashdan, T. B., Gallagher, M. W., Silvia, P. J., Winterstein, B. P., Breen, W. E., Terhar, D., & Steger, M. F. (2009). The curiosity and exploration inventory-II: Development, factor structure, and psychometrics. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(6), 987-998.
• McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American Psychologist, 52(5), 509-516.
• Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236(4799), 280-285.
• Steinberg, L. (2008). A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking. Developmental Review, 28(1), 78-106.
• Zuckerman, M. (1994). Behavioral expressions and biosocial bases of sensation seeking. Cambridge University Press.