Fear

Fear is a natural response that our bodies have to keep us alive.  Unfortunately with the decline of saber-tooth tigers, fear can sometimes become more of a burden than a blessing.  Fear can prevent some people from experiencing a fulfilling life because it becomes generalized to non life threatening stimuli and thus become a phobia.

One emotion that is very similar to fear is anxiety, being worried and fearful about the future.  Anxiety prevents many people from enjoying life to their fullest because they are terrified about what could happen. I decided to test people's response to the unknown with my experiment.  I originally designed my experiment to occur in a pitch black room, but sadly that didn't pan out.  step one was getting all the participants off balance by dividing them up into groups.  Then stare into a bright light so that the effects of darkness are more pronounced.  After staring into the lights for thirty seconds, the turns are turned off and the participants put in ear plugs.  I then started walking around the class so that people would be expecting me to be doing something, but all i did was get close to some people.  If anyone opened their eyes or talked, I used a squirt bottle to spray them with water.  This sensory deprivation period lasted roughly 5 minutes.  

     I expect that my classmates will feel anxious, nervous, or worried during the experiment.  I performed my experiment in class with some success.  Several people got sprayed for not following directions of staying quiet or eyes closed.  After the experiment was over I asked how everyone felt and the majority of the class responded with nervous or bored.  The response I received was roughly on par with what I had hoped for with a few exceptions. Some of the changes I would have if doing the experiment again would include, having blindfolds, white noise generators, and scary looking medical instruments laying around.

As for the discussion of who's project affected me the most, we'll see after class today.