Fear Experiment

Often anticipation can induce fear. In scary movies, music can often trigger the anticipation of something scary happening. The purpose for this assignment was to produce fear in an experiment demonstrated in class. For my experiment, I decided to take three unsuspecting volunteers from the class and have them open a container of biscuits. There were a few reasons I chose this as my experiment. First, I did not think anyone else would perform this experiment, so it would be original. Second, I myself hate opening them because of the anticipation of when the container pops. Ever since I can remember I've hated opening them and when possible I have someone else do it. If I have to open it, I usually jump when it pops, therefore I thought there would likely be at least one other person that would too.
I chose three male volunteers to open the containers. I had each one do it separately because I thought the experiment would produce better results if the volunteers were not aware of their task until the very moment they had to do it. Not one of my three male volunteers jumped when the containers popped (Will, Lloyd, and Travis.) However, I jumped at least once, Beth jumped, and another female classmate, Julia jumped twice which I saw out of my peripheral. My second volunteer, Travis also told me that he used to jump when opening them, but no longer does.
My prediction turned out to be correct, however not in the way that I expected. None of my volunteers jumped which surprised me, but three people present did. I found these results to be interesting because Beth pointed out after my experiment that each person who jumped was female. This could likely be because women generally tend to be scared easier than men.
If I could do my experiment differently, I would have chosen all female volunteers. However, I did not know this prior to the experiment. I definitely think if I would have chosen all females to begin with, I would have gotten better results, especially considering the only people who reacted to my experiment were female. Another possibility to enhance my experiment would be to either heat or freeze the container in order to create a more profound "pop" of the container.