The purpose of our study was to find out whether groups of people with different forms of risk-seeking behavior can be clearly differentiated from each other on the basis of sensation seeking, resilience, performance motivation, and temperament and character factors. Altogether 435 subjects participated in our research; 170 pro-social risk-takers (firemen), 194 anti-social risk-takers (perpetrators of violent crime) and 71 people exercising extreme sports. We assessed sensation seeking with the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS-8). For the assessment of resilience we used Neill and Dias' (2001) 15-item version of the originally 25-item self-administered questionnaire, Resilience Scale (RS) by Wagnild and Young. We used the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS-R), developed by Jonas W.B Lang and Stefan Fries in 2006, to assess performance motivation. Measuring temperament and character factors took place with the Hungarian adapted version (Rózsa and co, 2005) of Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Our results point out that although showing major differences, groups with different forms of risk-seeking behavior can not be clearly differentiated from each other with all of the scales used in this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]