Posts Tagged: sexual selection lab

I learned that despite the urge to resist, your senses and hormones will always have an impact on your behavior! Intra and inter sexual competition is much clearer now, cyclical fluctuation’s in females changing their attraction… Human sexual behavior is simple yet complex…very interesting stuff! We all think with our brains, but a lot of times our behavior is ruled chemically…

The sexual selection project was probably the greatest learning experience I’ve had all semester. The three most important things that it taught me was: how to write a research paper, how to survey people, and how to turn raw data into useful data that communicates a result. One of the most challenging parts of the project (besides writing the paper) was surveying people and constantly getting denied.

This sexual selection project has been quite an eye opener. The main lessons that I were able to learn from this project had a lot to do with the overall process and data collection.

First, it is very difficult sometimes to find subjects for surveys within different age groups, especially at higher ages.It is best to plan ahead as to where each sample group will be obtained.

Second, sometimes the data collected can have no use and/or the data really needed was not collected. It is always nice to execute a pilot to see how well things work out.

Third, and probably my favorite and most fun, it is VERY awkward for two guys to stand outside the girls’ restroom and survey girls as they go in or out of the restroom. It was already too late by the time we realized where we were standing… Nothing happened except feeling SUPER awkward.

It was the first time I was doing a project like this! I usually did not have to collect raw data by surveying people etc. Therefore, it was a good experience. It was actually quite fun going around the school area and even some public places to ask them several questions (and get rejected) about our project haha.

One thing I learnt is that sometimes our results do not correlate with our hypothesis. This was what happened to my group initially. Then, we had to brainstorm for another surveying idea to see if our hypothesis really is not supported or if our method of testing was wrong. After our second trial, we got better results which correlated with our hypothesis

The second thing I learnt is that within a group, not everyone has the same ideas, and it is usually hard to communicate especially if some of us aren’t willing to give in. Therefore, at some points of the project, I was pretty frustrated but had to keep my cool so that the project proceeds smoothly 😀

Lastly, I also learned how to write research papers better. Thankfully there was a draft we had to do and a peer review as I know where i went wrong and I was able to correct it before the final submission. There are just so many points to write down and it is hard to arrange them in the right order so that our paper will be written smoothly. Plus, the rubric given to us also helped me a lot in terms of what to write and what not to write in my papers.

The sexual selection paper is quite interesting, from finding an evolutionary based mate selection choice to designing and analyzing the data. My group and I had an idea of what we were going to do, but I do not think we had imagined how hard setting up a survey that was quick, clear, and able to produce data that we needed. So learning how to do so was an interesting process of revisions and tests. Another thing was how humans try to resist the urge of judging some one by appearance and shallow traits, but in the end it is those traits that people are most attracted to.