Risk Taking and Accidents in Adventure Sports Across Males and Females

Abstract

The popularity and practice of adventure physical activities in nature (APAN) have risen substantially in the past 20 years. At the same time, the number of events leading to serious injury has increased substantially. Several factors account for the occurrence of such events, albeit individual differences in personality traits together with sex differences appear as important intervening factors. Social or evolutionary approaches might be helpful to explain the higher risk taking and accidents in males compared with females. We evaluated whether sex similarities or differences emerged when relating individual traits with accidents in adventure sports, with a sample of Spanish practitioners of adventure sports (337 males, 168 females). Males endured more accidents than females albeit scoring similarly in risk taking. There was a more robust association between age and deliberate risk taking for males than for females, and risk taking was a more robust predictor of accidents for males than for females. Further, males remained more prone than females to endure an accident when scoring high in risk taking.