Day 26: Visiting a Place

Today I went to Walmart and surveyed some people. If you remember I did the same thing with college students on my campus. This time I asked Walmart employees and some of the customers. I was mostly trying to aim towards the middle-aged group so that I could introduce a different age group to my studies.

I asked the same four questions:

What's the riskiest thing you have done?
Would you become a yes man?
How many often do you turn down opportunities?
Anything you regret?

Question One:
42% answered with moving far away from home
42% answered spending a lot of money
15% nothing
1 person answered Flying a helicopter

The first two answers make sense. As an adult one typically moves away from their home, and takes on financial responsibility. So the average person will view a large amount of money spent, or a long move very risky.

Question Two:
75% answered no
25% answered I don't know
0% answered yes

I think results like this display the fact that people want choice. Most of the people I surveyed did not know what the yes man was. So once I had explained it they were turned off by the idea that they had to say yes. Human's tend to want choice, even if choosing the "wrong" answer could be harmful for them they want the choice to figure it out themselves, or "let me make my own mistakes".

Question Three:
25% answered often
75% answered not often

This one I don't really know. It was found that college students usually found themselves turning down opportunities often. So the opposite of what these results show. I am pretty sure I know the answer as to why college students find themselves turning down so many opportunities. As a college student you have to learn to balance, education, social life, food, exercise, work, and so many other things. On top of that everyone on campus is having an event, handing out free stuff, doing a project, or anything. So you come to a dilemma of not having enough time in the day. You need to do your work, but you also can't do every event on campus. So you turn down a lot. For example one day I was asked to go to four different events, all of which were at the same time. I had to turn down at least three of them. This is why I think college students feel this way. What confuses me is the difference between college students and adults. Adults have busy lives just as much as college students. Are they just not being presented with as much opportunities? Is there something I am missing. I am not sure. The thing that I can most likely conclude is that they just aren't presented with as many opportunities as college students are and therefore they don't feel like they miss out because they do accept the ones suggested. For example, a college student could be asked by five different people to go out to dinner with them daily, where as an adult will usually be called up by maybe one person to go out to dinner on a weekend. So therefore every day the college student is turning down four opportunities where as the adult is not turning down any. 

Question Four:
50% answered no
50% answered yes

These results were strange to me. I predicted that the older you were the more of a chance you would have to regret something. It makes sense the more time on earth, the more things you do, the more of a chance you have to have regrets. But then I realized that I was surveying a population who was kind of in the middle. The way I see it college students, who's results were 75% yes and 25% no, are more likely to have regrets because we have just come out of such a judging time of our life, high school. Just about everything one does in high school is known by everyone. If you do something stupid the entire world knows and the entire world judges you. In college that mentality dies down, but the anxiety from your recent past still exists causing to feel regretful.

When you are older and closer to death you begin to reflect on your life and therefore conclude on some of things things you regret. 

But as a middle aged adult you are kind of just in the middle. You don't have the anxiety from the recent pressures of attempting juvenile perfection in high school, but you also don't have the pressure of the end, you're just there. I think that this creates one to feel free from regrets. Some of course still feel the pressure of parents/in laws and society as a whole. This is the reason for the fifty/fifty split. You have either grown out of your past anxiety or you haven't.