Abstract

Ellen Bouknight

This experiment was performed to determine whether or not one person's suggestion has as effect on another person's subconscious reactions; and even further, whether males or females react to this stimuli more. It was predicted that a person's suggestions would have an effect on the majority of the subjects' reactions, and that females would be affected most by these suggestions.

All that was needed to perform this experiment was an experimenter and 40 subjects (20 males; 20 females). Each subject held a 2 to 3 minute conversation with the experimenter, during which the experimenter did each of the following actions: scratch arm, cough, sniffle, and yawn. During the conversation the experimenter kept a mental count as to which stimuli the subject reacted to. Once the conversation was over, the subject was informed of his/her experimentation and the subject's consent was obtained for them to be used as data. Each subject's reactions were recorded in a data table. The experimenter then determined, by observing the recorded data, whether males or females were more prone to the power of suggestion.

After performing this experiment, it was found that out of a total of 80 actions by the experimenter, males reacted only 27 times and females reacted only 24 times. These results proved the hypothesis to be incorrect in that males reacted more, though slightly, than females. The hypothesis was partially true in that the suggestion of others would affect most people because almost every subject did react to at least one of the experimenter's actions.