The method of this experiment consisted of asking 17 years-old males and females to rank 10 stimuli that they are afraid of (ranking the one they are most afraid of as 1).
The first 4results for females where like this :
1)God
2)Father
3)Ghost
4)Death
The first4 results for males where like this :
1)God
2)Death
3) Girlfriend
4) Having a child
From these results we can have some idea on what teenagers consider to be scary.
The common fear-triggers for females and males:
1)God
2)Death
From the differences we can understand that for males having a child and girlfriend is more frightening than for females…As we can see males don’t care about their parents as much as females do. From this we can understand that family members and family authority are more important for females, as they are more exposed to social pressure. On the other hand, teenage males consider the challenges of life to be more threatening. Females consider to be more threatening conceptual and intuitive triggers.
Aim: the aim of this study was to examine teenagers' feelings about old age.
Subjects: 12 teenagers between 16-20 years of age, 7 males and 5 females.
Method: Each subject had to answer the following 4 questions:
Q1. Do you imagine yourself old?
Q2. Do you see yourself happy when you are old?
Q3. If you could describe old age in 2 words, what would they be?
Q4. Would you like taking care of your grandparents?
Results:
Subjects
Gender
Question1
Question2
Question3
Question4
1
Male
No
Yes
Soul peace
Yes
2
Male
No
No
Upset, unhappy
Yes
3
Male
No
Yes
Unhappy
Yes
4
Male
Yes
Yes
Nephews, traveling
Yes
5
Male
No
No
Sick, bed
Yes
6
Female
No
Yes
Poor them
Yes
7
Male
Yes
Yes
Great experience
Yes
8
Female
No
Yes
Lonely, grave
Yes
9
Female
Yes
Yes
Tranquility, happy
Yes
10
Female
No
Yes
Childish, comfortable
Yes
11
Female
No
Yes
Stupid, ugly
No
12
Male
No
Yes
Old, calm
No
Findings:
a)Approximately all the subjects male or female answered NO to Q1.
b)There is a correlation between Q2 and Q3.
c)80% of the subjects answered YES to Q4.
Explanations:
a)Teenagers would not like to think of what will happen in the future or how they will get old, ugly, wrinkled. More, for them, the whole point of being a teenager is to be young, healthy and not think about illnesses, solitude or death.
b)There are 2 subjects who answered yes to Q2 meaning yes they imagine themselves happy when they are old, but changed in Q3 as they said that they describe old age as ugly, unhappy, lonely, sick etc. These are emotions which some times lead to negative feelings, the 2 who answered NO to Q2 also reported a negative emotion to Q3.
c)The males in study answered YES to Q4 because the male usually have bigger social responsibilities and would not mind having to take care of the elders of the family. Females also answered YES to Q4 as the emotions play a big role in their social exchanges, all of them would like to take care of the grandparents. Connecting these findings with the age of the subjects, we might also say that most of them ansewerd "yes" to Q4 due to the will to please and fear of being judged, wanting to make a good impression.
