Aging Fears By: Darian Titus Mr. Leingang’s sixth Period Science class

Problem How does age affect what people are afraid of?

Hypothesis As we increase the age of the surveyed people then the frequency of fears will increase because they have had more time to think about how dangerous the activities are. MV: Age groups RV: Fears CV: -questions about fears - Yes or no questions

Materials Pencil/pen (to record) Paper (to record on) Surveyors (the more used, the more accurate results)

Procedure 1) Set up like diagram. 2) Ask 25 people (5 people in 5 different age groups) the first question about fears. 3) Record each answer with age group. 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all of the other questions. 5) Find total/average number of fears for each age group.

Background Information There are many types of fears. Most can be tied back to a common “base” fear. For example, people may be afraid of spiders but usually people are actually afraid of the pain, sickness, and death caused by spiders. Also, people could be afraid of crashing in an airplane and dying then actually just being afraid of an airplane. I will talk more about the base fears of success, failure, and losing your most important relationships/loneliness. The first basic fear is the fear of success. This may seem like a joke to some of you. “Who can be afraid of succeeding?” you may ask. Well, you just kinda have to think about a few questions. Such as: “What would you do with yourself? How would you know if someone is just your friend to take advantage of you? Would you still be able to trust your friends?” Try answering these questions as you picture yourself as becoming a millionaire over night. Hard huh? Try thinking about that every night you go to sleep. A fear could start forming. The next basic fear is the fear of failure. This can tie in with the fear of success. If you want to succeed then there will always be a chance of failure. Most people are scared of failing because people will make fun of them. A tip that you can use is to change your philosophy on failure. We can always see that failing is just temporary mistakes that you will fix. The final basic fear that I will talk about is the fear of losing your most important relationships. This one is like the fear of failure and the fear of success. This one can be just like the fear of loneliness. Make sure you spend time with your loved and cherished ones to make memories that you won’t forget. To get rid of the fear of losing your most important relationships, you should try to get rid of the fear of loneliness. To try and getting rid of these, you need to make a better connection with yourself. This will cause you able to make more important relationships that you won’t be afraid of. People are usually drawn to people who don’t need others and when you need others to be happy for you to be happy then they will be repulsed. A very interesting thing you will realize is that a lot of people want to be your friend. Another very interesting thing will occur when you make friends with yourself. It is that you realize that being alone isn’t that bad. Those are three basic fears out of many. The first step to facing any fear is realizing you have one. That is what I want people to learn from this background information. When people can overcome their fears, then people would not have to hide anything. That is what I hope to accomplish through this background information.

Age Groups Total and Average 24 27/55 2 5/ /55 3 2/ /55 3 3/ /55 3 6/ /55 3 8/11 Age V.S. Fears

Conclusion I thought that if the younger you got, then the less you would fear because you usually don’t have enough time to think about what you’re afraid of. My results showed that I was correct. We can prove this because the age group 0-12 got a total of 27. Also, the age group 41+ got a total of 41. The difference was 14. This supports my original hypothesis. Therefore the older we get gives us more time to think about the bad things that can happen and will make us fear things more.

Abstract The purpose of my project was to see how the age differences affect what people are afraid of. I believed that the age group of the 0-12 year olds would have the least amount of fears. A major error that could affect this data is the age groups and the different questions. Also, the factor of doing that something already could affect it as well and people could lie. I learned that the more time you think about your fears, the more you fear them. I could also have one question and ask many people because the more people you ask reduces the percentage of error.

Age VS. Fears