Physical attractiveness and reproductive success in humans: evidence from the late 20th century United States☆
Article InfoTo view the full text, please login as a subscribed user or purchase a subscription. Click here to view the full text on ScienceDirect.
Fig. 1
Women's sample hazard functions (left-hand panels) and cumulative probabilities (right-hand panels) of having the first, second, third and fourth child plotted against age by attractiveness groups. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown for cumulative probabilities. Notice the different y-axis scales in the panels.
Fig. 2
Men's sample hazard functions (left-hand panels) and cumulative probabilities (right-hand panels) of having the first, second, third and fourth child plotted against age by attractiveness groups. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown for cumulative probabilities. Notice the different y-axis scales in the panels.
Abstract
Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940), we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age ∼18 years predicted the number of biological children at age 53–56 years. In women, attractiveness predicted higher reproductive success in a nonlinear fashion, so that attractive (second highest quartile) women had 16% and very attractive (highest quartile) women 6% more children than their less attractive counterparts. In men, there was a threshold effect so that men in the lowest attractiveness quartile had 13% fewer children than others who did not differ from each other in the average number of children. These associations were partly but not completely accounted for by attractive participants' increased marriage probability. A linear regression analysis indicated relatively weak directional selection gradient for attractiveness (β=0.06 in women, β=0.07 in men). These findings indicate that physical attractiveness may be associated with reproductive success in humans living in industrialized settings.
Keywords:
Fertility, Interbirth interval, Physical attractiveness, Reproductive success, Offspring sex ratio, SociobiologyTo access this article, please choose from the options below
Purchase access to this article
Claim Access
If you are a current subscriber with Society Membership or an Account Number, claim your access now.
Subscribe to this title
Purchase a subscription to gain access to this and all other articles in this journal.
Institutional Access
Visit ScienceDirect to see if you have access via your institution.
☆This study was supported by the Kone Foundation (MJ). This research uses data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 1991, the WLS has been supported principally by the National Institute on Aging (AG-9775 and AG-21079), with additional support from the Vilas Estate Trust, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A public use file of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study is available from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, and at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/data/. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author.
