Speaking of Psychology - Why are people drawn to extreme sports? With Eric Brymer, PhD

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

For most of us, the idea of jumping off a bridge with a parachute or surfing a wave 70 feet tall seems to defy comprehension.  Psychologists, too, have wondered what drives people to participate in extreme sports. Eric Brymer, PhD, talks about why many of our preconceived notions about adventurers are wrong, what draws people to extreme adventure, the role fear plays in how adventurers approach what they do, and what lessons less adventurous people can learn from research on extreme adventure sports. For transcripts, links and more information, please visit the Speaking of Psychology Homepage. Learn a new language. Get 55% off at babbel.com/apa. (Rules and restrictions may apply.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For most of us, the idea of jumping off a bridge with a parachute or surfing a wave 70 feet high seems to defy comprehension. We might regard base jumpers, big wave surfers, free solo rock climbers, and other extreme adventurers with a mixture of confusion, awe, and skepticism, thinking there's no way I could risk my life like that. Psychologists too have wondered what drives people to participate in extreme sports, and they're finding that many of our preconceived notions about adventurers are wrong. Many extreme adventurers, they argue, are not dare-devil risk-takers, but instead careful planners who prepare methodically for the adventures they undertake. So what does draw people to extreme adventure? Do adventurers share any common personality traits? Do they just

have less fear than the rest of us, or do they channel their fear differently? And what role does fear play in how adventurers approach what they do? What lessons can less adventurous people learn from research into extreme adventure? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Eric Breimer, a psychologist and senior lecturer at Southern Cross University in Australia, where he studied.

the human nature relationship and performance in extreme environments. He has interviewed dozens of adventurers for his research studies and is the editor of a recent book, Adventure Psychology, going knowingly into the unknown. Dr. Breimer, thank you for joining me today. Thank you very much for inviting me, Kim. It's very wonderful to be with you across the pond. The big pond. The very big pond. Well, let's start with a question that I posed in the introduction. What draws people to participate in activities like base jumping or free solo climbing? I mean, you've interviewed a lot of adventurers over the years. What have they told you about why they do what they do?

Yeah, that's a fascinating question because there's actually there's two parts to that question. One is why do people start? And the other one is why do people continue? And they're often very different. So the traditional notion is the no fear, risk-taking, the kind of death-wish notion where people get into these things because they just love to take risks. They've got a personality that drives them to look at these kind of activities. But actually we find it's very different to that. The reason people start is as varied as there are people there.

I've spoken to some people who said, well, you know, my family has surfers, so I got into surfing. But they were the only one that went into big wave surfing. I've spoken to people who said, I didn't think I was interested in any of this. I can remember talking to one lady for sake of example who called herself a corporate chick. And she said, only when I went to a corporate motivational talk. And I saw this person was describing their life and they had images of some base jumping because they were a base jumper. They were also a medical doctor as well, but they were a base jumper. And she said something just clicked inside of me.

And I thought that looks fascinating. And then she spent six, seven years learning everything she needed to learn in order to start to base jump. I can, so there's all sorts of varieties of reasons why people get into it. And believe it or not, some people get into it because they love the idea of safety and managing sort of, you know, the base jumping association in Australia, for sake of example, has a safety officer. So there are all sorts of reasons.

And most of those reasons are individual. They're based on people's particular life at the time, what comes their way. It's not always, there is a kind of framework out there that suggests that their opportunities in their particular environment because they have a personality that just go and do it. But we also find that's not quite true either. I've spoken to people who were born and bred and bought up in a city. But one particular person said, ever since he can remember, he was just really fascinated by stories of the mountains. And he used to read mountain stories, mountaineering stories, all those sort of things. Soon he was old enough, he moved to the mountain areas and started to learn how to climb and mountaineer and all those sort of things when he could do that in his own.

I've spoken to people who lived in the middle of Australia that just had this kind of connection or fascination with the surf. As soon as they were old enough, as soon as they could, they moved to the coast to start developing skills and activities within surfing. So why people get into it is, you know, it's a personal thing. And I'll be honest, there are actually some people get into it because they see these videos on YouTube. They hear this heavy rock music and they think this is exciting and thrilling. I'll get into that and I'll give that a go. But often what happens with those people is either they very quickly realize it's not quite as simple as they thought originally. It actually takes a lot of commitment and hard work and training, et cetera, to do this well.

Or if they're lucky, they have an accident, which means they can't do it anymore. But often they die and then they just can't continue. So they drop out pretty quickly. So that brings us on to the next element is why people continue. And that's the really fascinating question. Because what we're definitely finding is the idea of the traditional idea of no fear, having a death wish, having a risk taking or a type of personality doesn't fit the extreme sports athlete. In fact, we find they're very careful.

We find that in fact they have an in-depth knowledge of the environment that they are participating in. we find that actually it takes years and they do some really intense training to get to the skills. One base jump for sake of example before they started proximity flying. And for those who don't know, proximity flying is when you jump off a cliff, but you have a wingsuit and then you fly along the cliff as far as you can and travel for a distance before you pull your parachute. But before he transitioned from base jumping to wingsuit, he spent years researching across the world every single potential accident in order to figure out whether there were patterns. And then he did find patterns.

And he decided, well, okay, these are the patterns where things go wrong. I'm going to avoid those. And this is not an unusual kind of activity at all. So people really get to profound, not only the environment, but profound knowledge of the activity they're doing. The other thing that happens as well, and people start at different levels here, is that because extreme sports athletes are basically on their own, if something goes wrong in the middle of an extreme sport activity, nobody can help you out.

The only person that's there for you is yourself. So you have to have a really profound, deep knowledge of your capacities, of what you're capable of and how you're feeling and all those sort of things. Because if you're not feeling right, if things aren't quite right or you have the sense that something is not right, it might just be the winds in the wrong direction or something isn't sort of feeling well. You have to have the capacity to say, well, actually, you know what? I'm going to walk away.

I'll come back again another day because today doesn't feel good. And that happens more than you realize within an extreme sport context as well. And the people that I interviewed weren't in the typical age that we think about extreme athletes as well. I mean, they weren't the sort of older teenagers, younger 20s. The youngest person was just over 30 and the oldest person. was in their 70s, and they were still participating in their particular chosen extreme sport, you know, the ones that they had chosen.

The last element of this is because of that requirement of the in-depth knowledge of the environment, we often find that extreme athletes, they're not people that go out and, you know, how can I demonstrate my risk-taking activity here today? Oh, look, there's a, I'll just grab a mountain bike and try and do this, or I'll grab this, or they're very focused in the activity because they learn so much about it. is very rare to find that people do more than one activity. Or if they do, it's because they need the skills to, say, climb a mountain in order to jump off if they're a base jumper. So they need a certain element of skills to get to the particular place.

But really, their main activity is base jumping. So in a summary, basically, there's two elements of motivations, why people get into it and why people continue. And they're very different. What you're describing is a really interesting level of meticulousness, and I'm wondering whether these people are as meticulous about everything else in their lives. That's a very good question. They are definitely – well, there's two elements to that one as well, unfortunately. One is that doing the adventure and the extreme sport does change your attitude in everyday life as well. and it changes the way you interact with others, the way you experience your relationship with a natural world.

It changes the way you experience everyday activities. For such as example, you may still feel a little bit nervous public speaking if you're not used to it, but people often report utilizing their extreme sports skills to work with that and say, well, in the end, I have these feelings in other places, so I should be able to do this as well. If meticulousness means over, you know, over-cautious, over-specific, over-perfectionist, if you like, then I would say no, because actually life becomes a lot more enjoyable, a lot more fun, a lot more sort of, you know, you're less concerned about some of the minor things that we may, who, you know, not extreme sort of athletes, considered to be very important.

I remember, you know, extreme athletes talking about how they interact with others. And, you know, before I was an adventure, I used to get really concerned when people were really cross with me or really disappointed at where I used to work. Now it doesn't bother me. I just think, well, okay, that's, you know, they're having a bad day. That's their problem, not mine. I remember speaking to a doctor who used to say, I was so concerned, you know, the medical element of what I do and what I was taught, you know, people, in the end, their emergency doctor, you know, People were just numbers and beds. But then he's had a very interesting story how he got into it, but that's for later on, I think.

But he said as a result of getting into adventure and becoming a stream athlete, he now realizes that actually there's Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so in the bed. And not only that, but they have all these other things going on in the life. And they have a family and they have a place that they live. And maybe they have pets. So the perspective changes. Life becomes much more enjoyable, much more fulfilling. as a result of participating extreme sports because it's that existential notion, you know.

You realize how close you are to death and then everything else doesn't matter as much as you thought it did. Yeah, it sounds almost mystical, you know, in that sense. It very much is and people often report things that, you know, there have been some extreme sport athletes who have been trying for years and years through mindfulness meditation to get to a point of freedom and they've got it pretty instantly through extreme sports, but not through mindfulness meditation.

There are parts of the experience. that I could only describe as ineffable. There are senses of freedom. There are senses of floating, flying, time standing still. You know, sensory capacities expanding so you can see things and hear things much clearer whilst you're doing, you know, involved in those sports than you can in everyday life. So I mentioned in the intro some of the different extreme sports that you study. I'm wondering what counts as an extreme sport?

Why is base jumping is an extreme sport, but something like... I don't know, basketball is not. So that was probably the major challenge when I first got involved in looking at extreme sports athletes. And that was because research up to the time I started had not made that clear. So they would use the notion of kayaking or they would use the notion of mountaineering. But actually when you dig very closely into it, there's a big difference between kayaking on flat water and kayaking in grade 6. flat water, you get a bit wet and maybe, you know, you get a bit cold depending where you are. If you come out of your boat, if things go wrong, grade six if things go wrong, then you are, the chances are you'll die.

So one of the things that I did was to say, well, okay, exactly the question you asked me, what makes an extreme sport's an extreme sport? And so the first thing we looked at is if you take this as a continuum, the first thing is that they're interacting in the natural world. So the activity takes place in the natural world. So that means the environment is not so constrained as a basketball environment or a cricket environment or something. So the environment is free. There aren't lines and regulations to say this is in and that is out, which is really important because that's part of the decision-making process, a problem-solving process. The second one is potential outcomes or the most likely outcome if things go wrong is that you're dead. You're lucky if you get seriously injured and people have been lucky.

But the most likely outcome if things go wrong and you haven't been able to resolve it quickly is that you die. And that's unlikely to happen in basketball. I remember one participant saying, you know, they were describing the difference between something like actually they use basketball because they were from the US and their particular extreme sport. And they said, you imagine every time you've missed a goal in basketball, somebody shot you in the head. That's the difference between extreme sports and basketball. So basketball can be extreme, but perhaps we don't want to play that game because we'd end up with a lot of accidents and a lot of dead basketball players. The last element, which is really, very important is that they're independent activities in the sense that they are self-directed. You can't undertake an extreme sport as what we understand as a teamwork activity, or it's very difficult to do that.

Because in the end, most extreme sports are, whilst you might have colleagues with you and once you make the jump in a base jump or once you get on the wave and a big wave surf or once you decide to go over that waterfall, you are on your own. Some people tend to think of those who participate in these kinds of sports as adrenaline junkies. In other words, they have something that's akin to an addiction. Is that notion accurate? The notion of addiction is really interesting. get down that pathway. I'm sure that's for another day. But if we take the addiction as something that is harmful to you, something that actually is bad for you, ends up with a, ends up sort of damaging some way, then most definitely not, unless things go wrong, of course, because actually

what we find is for most participants, the reason they continue is because they get something so powerfully transformational and beneficial from it. That is akin to flourishing, thriving, is akin to all those kind of mystical things that people search for. That's why they can keep going because it's that sort of element of it. If we consider it in terms of something about it that drives you to continue doing it, then again, it's not a negative concept that drives you to continue doing it. It's that more positive element, the sort of the more flourishing, thriving, high levels of well-being, the feelings of freedom, flying, the kind of ineffable, all those sort of things

that provides the opportunity to keep going. The other element which really indicates that it's not akin to an addiction is that we find that extreme athletes are really keen to give back. They're really keen to work for the environment that they participate in. So we have extreme athletes, world-renowned stream athletes, who travel the world defending and trying to talk about the oceans and how we should be protecting them and looking after them. or we have extreme skiers going around the world looking at, you know, trying to get people to think more carefully about climate change because of what's happening to the environment in the mountains.

So actually what we get is a really positive outcome from it. I mean, if we say that mindfulness-based work, or if we say that those sort of things are addictive, then because they're really positive and powerful and people want to keep doing them, then perhaps there's some similarity between addiction. But where we are at the moment, the indications are definitely not. Are there parallels between people who pursue extreme sports and people who pursue other types of extreme experiences, such as being a war correspondent or a Navy SEAL or even a spy? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I haven't researched spies and things like that, so I don't know. If anybody is out there who is a spy who would like to be part of a research project, please let me know. But if we look at a comparison between people who do extreme sport and people who do those

other activities, there are some differences in the sense that an extreme sport is generally speaking a leisure-based activity. It's something that people do. If you're lucky, you get sponsored to do these sort of things. But for most people, it's something they do in their own time. And they earn their living. They do the day-to-day stuff in a different way. So they aren't linked.

They aren't combined. There's no necessity to do it. There's nobody saying, by the way, your job is to do this as in a Navy SEAL or your job is to do this as in a spy. There isn't any of those outside forces that come into it that to indicate that this is something that they almost need to do because it's part of their work, part of what they're supposed to do. So that separates the two already. The second element is that there was some research some time ago that tried to use psychodynamic theory and explain. extreme diving through psychodynamic theory. I think they did a very good job at explaining why some people might do extreme diving, but actually it didn't really do a good job of why everybody

does it. And there are definitely people who get involved who might have particular issues outside and they want to kind of do these things, but that's a very small percentage of people that get involved. So I think the short answer to that is no. And for all sorts of different reasons, One is, for sake of example, if we take the personality argument, you know, you've got to have a different kind of personality to become a Navy SEAL or to become a spy or whatever it might be. And I'd say I'm not an expert in those areas at all, so I'm hoping I'm not commenting, you know, in a way that's sort of derogatory to them. But we find within extreme sport, there's such a range of personality structures from the Big Five to all sorts of other personality, the sensation seeking ones, etc. that participate in extreme sports, it's impossible to say that this kind of personality

is the kind of personality that will work in extreme sports. It's probably easy to say that if something goes wrong, you may be likely to be a personality or type, but not to participate, not to do things well, not to explore what an extreme sport can offer. So there's all sorts of indications that actually participate in extreme sport is not similar to some other activities where things might be dangerous or they might be, you know, require a particular way of behaving.

Having said that, there are also things that could be very similar, such as the sense of calm when you're doing something that definitely comes across in extreme sports. And I can imagine as a spy and as a Navy SEAL, etc., you'd need to have a sense of calm in really dangerous situations. If not, things aren't going to go too well for you. and extreme sports athletes have that sense of calm. And perhaps also a sense of vulnerability is probably too strong, but surrendering to the moment. Extreme sports athletes are very much, well, I will control everything I can, but I know in the end I can't control the whole process. So I will do whatever I can to prepare well, to be in contact with myself to make sure I'm feeling okay, to make sure my parachutes packed, my board is appropriate to check the weather, to do all those sort of things around it.

But once I leap, once I make the decision to go, in many ways, I have to just let go. I have to surrender to the moment and be so much so present in that moment that I can interact with that environment so effectively that if things do go wrong for sake of example, I can fix them. Or I can enjoy. I can be, you know, I can be with the environment enough that I can play with it. I can be in a dance with it. I can be working with that environment. And I could imagine that's probably very similar if you're a spy or if you're a Navy SEAL as well.

You plan what you can. But in the end, the environment also has a role in that, in whatever happens. And therefore, you have to be totally attuned to the information in that environment to make decisions in here and now. And that is very similar, I think, to an extreme sports athlete. Let's talk for a minute about fear. A lot of people might assume that these adventurers are fearless, but you argue that they actually have a lot of fear. And in fact, they need to have fear in order to do what they do.

Can you explain that? Sure. We're not quite sure of the nuances yet. But broadly, the idea of having no fear, that's the only way you can do that doesn't work in extreme sport context. The reason it doesn't work is because if you have no fear, you're not taking what you're doing. seriously. And if you don't take what you're doing seriously, it means you're not going to pay attention to the real sort of fine information in their environment, to yourself, etc., and it's likely that things will go wrong. So what we actually find is that extreme sports athletes

take fear seriously, and in fact, fear is really important to them in the sense that it's saying pay attention. When you have that sense of fear, it means you take what you're doing more seriously. You pay attention to all the cues and the information and the environment. You pay attention to how you're feeling. You really make sure that you've done all the preparation, etc. properly. So fear, if you like, is a trigger to pay attention or a facilitator to sort of suggest that you need to take this seriously. This is something if you don't take seriously can go, can be quite disastrous, can be a disastrously wrong. So we find instead that what extreme sports athletes are doing is learning to utilize fear as a way of saying,

hang on a minute, this feeling I'm getting is suggesting something. What is it that's going on? And it might be for sake of an example, an extreme skier who is in that sort of sense of being present suddenly gets a sensation. They can feel the sensation of fear. And they don't know why to begin with, but maybe the perceptual systems have picked up a bit of a noise or a feeling or a smell or a cool, a haptic kind of. And then they can pay attention to the environment and think, ah, there could be an avalanche and then they know what they need to do. Or a base jumper might do something similar, they might feel the air and think, hang on a minute, I thought it was supposed to be doing this, but this isn't quite right. Something is not happening here, and they might

realize and they can pay attention. Actually, the air is going a different direction or the wind is going a different direction than I thought it was going. So all those little cues that are facilitated by fear are really, really important. He says, pay attention. This is serious. Do something about it. What we're not quite sure yet is whether the sensation, you know, what happens first, the sensation of fear, obviously, there's an element of the, of picking up something in the environment, and that might be a sensation that comes into the body that says pay attention. But we don't quite know whether it's actual information that says pay attention or whether it's giving you the kind of a bit of a sensation that you then have to look out for information

that says pay attention. So that little nuance is not quite there, but it's actually a really important element. I'm wondering if interest in extreme or adventure sports has increased in recent years, or does it just seem that way because we're seeing a lot more coverage of these sorts of things in the media and online. Yes. Yeah, I think we are seeing more, which is definitely good, but actually it has increased as well. A report done by the in the UK, well, there's one done in America, there's one in the UK and there's one done in China too. In the UK, adventure sports are the fastest growing sport. So 55% of people involved in physical activity in sport are doing something

adventurous. This was maybe four or five years ago. The U.S. has done something similar and they see massive rises in an adventure and more extreme adventures across the U.S. China in a slightly lower level has seen enormous increases in people doing things like mountaineering and hill walking and things like that. Millions of people doing it now and India the same. Partially there's the change is due to the tourism aspect of extreme sports, the more adventure tourism element of it where people can come and have these experiences that may not have the skills and expertise to do it themselves, but they can do something in a context that means there is somebody who is an expert in that area who can manage and, you know, rafting for sake of example,

or group bushwalking activities or maybe you go on a three or four day camp or something like that. So those kind of activities are happening. So there's definitely a massive increase across the world, as I say, partially driven by tourism, but also driven by recreational activities, too, people choose and to do it. And that might also be why there are so many people, even though, you know, part of it is to do with the technology, but we see so much more because more people are interested in looking at them and watching them and, you know, and imagining themselves in those contexts or dreaming of the next time they can go away and do that kayak trip or whatever it might be. and I think that's kind of reciprocal thing. The more people do it, the more people are interested, the more they want to see more, and goes on like this. It's a bit of a spiral. It does have a downside.

All this technology has a downside. And the downside for sake of example is you can watch something that is undertaken by an extreme sport expert. And you don't realize that they spent 10 or 15 years developing the skills to be able to do what they're doing. and you think, oh, that looks interesting and exciting. I can't do that myself. To a certain extent, you can't do the very extreme level yourself because you don't have the skills and expertise and you wouldn't know what to buy and all those sort of things.

But it does open up the potential for people doing things that perhaps they don't have the skills and expertise to do. Technology has driven that to an extent. For example, in my activity, whitewater kayaking, the one I prefer to do when I started all boats of fiberglass. So if you bumped in a rock, you'd have a great big hole, then you'd be swimming. Once boats became plastic, you could bump in a rock and it's a bit like a pinball

pinball machine. You know, you bump on one rock, you bump on another rock and you bump on another rock and eventually find the way down. So you don't need the skills to do the kind of things that you needed high-level skills to do when I started. So there is that element that we've got to be careful of. But otherwise, I think, it's a really good thing because more people are doing it, more people are interested in seeing these things.

And therefore, that encourages more people to get involved, and hopefully at a level that they can manage and hopefully they develop and get the skills and maybe go on courses to ensure that they understand the dangers, the challenges, all those sort of things of participating in these sports as well. So given the increased interest, do you think that adventure psychology is its own specialty, that it should be recognized as its own specialty, or is it just a part of sports psychology? Yes, that is a really good question. And my feeling is that sport psychology, you know, the difference being sports psychology and adventure psychology is as broad as the difference between sport and clinical and education and organization or clinical and clinical.

And these are very different notions. The very different notions for a number of reasons. One is that the idea of what an effective outcome is very different. In a sport context, it's about winning and it's about doing that sort of things. that has been translated, let's say, into mountaineering in the terms of conquering Everest. No extreme athletes would consider their conquering Everest. They know full well that A, Everest doesn't even know that they're on the mountain, let alone that's a competition. They also know that if Everest did know that, that they'd snuff them out in a second with the weather conditions.

The other element, of course, is getting to the top of Everest is not the goal. Getting back down again safely is the goal, whereas in a sport context, getting to the top would be considered the goal. So that's one thing. The second element that's really important, as I said earlier on, is the fact that you're participating in environments that are not constrained by white lines, you know, that's in, that's out, and all those kind of things. So there are elements within the environment that you actually have to determine, decide what is an appropriate way to move this environment. There aren't lines that say, no, no, you can't go there because now it's out. And then of course, this most serious element, and there's a few other things as well, but the most serious element is if things do go wrong, it's not a matter of, oh, well, I've lost the game, never mind, we'll train a bit harder next time. You're dead. There isn't a sort of an opportunity for to say, okay, well, I'll come back alive and I'll train a bit harder next time and I'll give it a go next time. You're dead. You don't have that capacity.

So there are very different, very different activities, even though they involve physical activity, even though there's an element of having to, organized, plan, train. In the end, I would say that sport and adventure are as different as sport and clinical. So do you think that people who don't necessarily engage in adventures sports, but do other things, for example, controlled adventures, ziplining or some of these outdoor ropes courses, can they derive some of the same benefits that an actual adventure sports person achieves. I do think so, yes. There are elements that aren't the same, obviously, because you haven't set up the zip

line or you may not be an expert in determining how to tie a rope to an ankle if you're going to do a bungee jump or something along those lines. But it still takes an element of knowledge of yourself and trust in yourself. It still takes an element of being able to read the environment to the extent that you can decide whether or not you are actually in the right frame of mind to do this jump. So there's still some element of finding out more about yourself. To an extent there is, but what we're finding very much that there is also a lot of those kind of activities that are very similar to the, you know, to the roller coaster ride in the sense it gives you an element of it, but it doesn't

give you that depth that you would get from an adventure activity. One other thing to remember also is that in the end, human beings are designed to be a lot of. adventurous. We're not designed to be sedentary. We're not designed to be, you know, to be careful. We're not designed. We've done a fantastic job at designing our environments, let's say, Masler's triangle as a metaphor, to make sure we get, you know, nice water, good health cover, a roof over our head. But the problem is the real essence of human existence has been designed out as a result from us, you know, our societies, our cities, et cetera. And the element at the top of that triangle, that self, you know, the idea where you're kind of getting into flourishing and thriving,

etc. Is not really designed in those environments. If you look at traditional peoples, the way they lived their life and the way everybody used to live their life was, I wonder what's around the corner, is that noise a saber-toothed tiger, you know, what kind of decisions do I make? What's the environment? So we used to live our lives in relation to the environment in the same way that extreme and adventure athletes do at this moment in time.

So actually adventure is a fundamental element of what it means to be human. Not being adventurous is where the problem is. That's the aspect that we need to think very carefully about, not being adventurous. Of course, our lives are longer now because there is no saber-toothed tiger outside the door. So what are the next big questions that you are looking into as you continue this quest? Yes, so the main area that we're looking at at the moment is we're not at a twice. suggesting that everybody should be a base jumper or a big wave surfer or something along those lines or see it as their life goal to come back down safely from the top of Everest.

We're not suggesting that at all. But what we are finding, as I mentioned earlier on, this, because the indications are that adventure is a fundamental human, it's what human beings are meant to be. We wouldn't have got to where we are right now if we weren't adventurous. We wouldn't have, you know, the original human being wouldn't have said, I wonder what's around the corner and we wouldn't have expanded across the world the way we have. And all those sort of things wouldn't have happened if we didn't have an adventurous element in it. And what we're trying to do now is figure out what aspects of adventure are directly linked to well-being and how can we utilize those aspects to support well-being across the globe for people. For sake of example,

we know and we have known for a long time that physical activity is really good for mental health and well-being. So adventure includes physical activity. So, adventure includes physical activity. So There's an element of that in there. We have known not as long as physical activity, and we're getting a better knowledge of it at the moment. But we are starting, I mean, there's thousands of papers. There's more work to be done, but we're getting a pretty solid understanding of how the natural world, the relationship to human beings and the natural world enhances health and well-being for both planet and people. We're trying to figure out what kind of activities, what kind of environments and all those sort of things.

But those two, adventure includes those two. But there's something else in adventure as well. You could argue is more existential, if you like. It could argue that it allows people to experience what human beings are really capable of doing. We call it the form of life, as in there's an element of a way, you know, a kind of way that human beings live their life. What I mean by that is, you know, a monkey form of life and a bird form of life can both live in trees. They both climb trees. They both do all those sort of stuff in trees.

But a bird form of life can see as trees. a launch pad to fly. A monkey can't. It might be able to jump, but it can't fly. In the same way, human beings as a form of life have a capacity to experience and live in relation to the world around them, the natural world. We have gradually over the years trimmed that down for all sorts of really good reasons. You know, maybe it started when we started a farm. Maybe it started when industrial revolution came. Maybe it started when we, you know, became more modern societies, is more concerned with health and living longer and all those sort of things. Who knows when he started?

But as a result, we've gradually chipped away all these aspects of what it means to be human. That means we aren't really living the human life. That's not to say we suddenly want everybody to die at 20 and we suddenly want everybody to do those sort of things. But then there are elements of adventure in the natural world whilst you're being physically active that actually could enhance people's lives into their 70s, 80s, 90s. A really interesting program on SBS here, which is actually a UK program by a doctor called Michael Mosley. And he started to look in what he called, you know, aging and aging well.

And the first program was all about a 79 or 80 year old who was a parachute jumper. And he started in his early 70s. And he's describing how his life has just expanded as a result, you know, and how the sort of things, the way he lives his life has just totally changed and the joy it gets from him. But for others, the idea the adventure might be, I've never played football in my life. You know what? I'm going to set up a local women's football team. And we've had somebody interviewed there and showed how that strengthened her bones.

For others, it might be I come from a cultural society where women don't do anything, let alone surf. And there's a lovely surfing organization in Iran and across those sort of things. So there are all sorts of ways that we can tap into adventure. But what we need to ensure is that the way we tap into it is going to enhance that benefit rather than take away from. We don't want to tap into the wrong things. We don't want to tap into the things or you must go base jumping. We want to tap into the things that allow everybody to get the benefits of adventure.

And that's the sort of stuff we're working on at the moment. Well, Dr. Brom, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been really fascinating. Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure. And thank you very much indeed for inviting me, Kim. You can read more about the psychology of extreme sports in the October issue of APA's magazine Monitor on Psychology. Go to our website at www.w.combeckycology.org and look for the links

on this episode's page. You can also find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology there, or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Wynerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condyenne. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.