New research illuminates why getting scared is good for your soul¬—revealing why BASE jumpers may be less crazy than you think.

A recent study found that extreme sports athletes, defined as those who partake in “activities where the most likely outcome of a mismanaged mistake or accident is death,” were not fearless, but utilized fear to stimulate positive outcomes and personal growth.

The study examined fifteen subjects, ten men and five women, who were involved in an extreme sport, such as big-wave surfing, extreme skiing, waterfall kayaking, extreme mountaineering, solo rope-free climbing or BASE jumping—launching from buildings, antennas, spans (bridges), or earth (cliffs), parachute equipped. The study debunked the bravado persona associated with extreme sports athletes, noting that participants are not fearless at all. “If you want the truth, if you want a true slogan for these kinds of sports it is ‘Oh please don’t let me die!’” said one BASE jumper from the Queensland University of Technology study.

The research, conducted by Eric Brymer, found that participants were not sadistic fear chasers. To the contrary, fear played a large role in decision-making and consequence weighing—navigating future action plans, “which involved the potential destruction of the physical self,” said the study published last summer in the Journal of Health Psychology. So why do it?

One psychological difference between extreme sports athletes and everybody else is that the athletes don’t see fear as a barrier to participation. In fact, said the study, they often see it as vital to their participation. “…fear is what keeps you alive, it’s your fear that stops you from standing right on the very edge,” said one participant. Extreme sports participants often see people who are fearless as a “danger to themselves and others,” noted the paper, referencing a 1998 study.

Extreme sports athletes may feel fear, but are they really just like everyone else? “Some of the findings indicate that, on a population level, their personalities do seem to be different, and they score differently in measures of temperament and character,” said Eric Monasterio, who has done extreme sports personality research. While they score high in the novelty-seeking category, “whether they truly enjoy being scared is something that’s more debatable,” he said.

Participants also saw facing fear as an avenue to personal growth. Empowerment, for example, was cited as a by-product of the ability to control fear before it turned into panic. The paper suggests that fear during extreme sports triggered positive transformations in the rest of their life, “…because we’ve overcome these fears in a physical environment other fears are generally insignificant,” said one participant. Fear was also viewed with less tangible but equally powerful benefits, namely, transcendence, an acceptance of your own mortality and unity with the environment.

It is not lost on extreme sports athletes why the average joe is reluctant to hurl himself down a thirty-foot waterfall, despite promises of transcendence. Participant interviews emphasized the role of experience in fear-management. Wouter Verbraak, a professional sailboat racer who once embarked on an 112-day-long distance race, pointed out that during competitions, boats capsize, critical parts break, and collisions with submerged objects occur, but preparation and experience can minimize problems and therefore situations where fear may arise. “I think we definitely see fear and that is why we know that things can go wrong and that we have to be prepared,” said Verbraak (who was not involved in the study).

While Adam Naylor, a sport psychology specialist, said the study fits well with recent neurological research on the role of emotions, he echoes common reservations regarding qualitative studies. While quantitative research utilizes statistics, measurements and numerical observations to come to conclusions, qualitative studies—often employed in social sciences—use less formal methods, like interviewing to gain a deeper understanding of a phenomenon. “The results are very well done. Qualitative research has come a very long way, but I think you have to be really careful of generalizing with the qualitative stuff,” said Naylor.

When looking at thrill seeking and risk taking behavior Monasterio cautioned that, “the truth, like most things in life, is that it’s more nuanced.”

As the study stressed, fear is “…far more complex than the traditional notion of an adrenaline rush.”