Jokela Markus
Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Evol Hum Behav. 2009 Sep 1;30(5):342-350. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.006.
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 predicted the number of biological children at age 53-56. 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.
身体吸引力一直与交配行为有关，但其在当代人类生殖成功中的作用却出人意料地很少受到关注。在威斯康星纵向研究中（1937年至1940年间出生的1244名女性和997名男性），我们研究了从大约18岁时拍摄的照片中评估出的吸引力是否能预测53至56岁时亲生子女的数量。在女性中，吸引力以非线性方式预测了更高的生殖成功率，因此有吸引力的（第二高四分位数）女性比缺乏吸引力的同龄人多生育16%的子女，非常有吸引力的（最高四分位数）女性则多生育6%。在男性中，存在一种阈值效应，即吸引力最低四分位数的男性比其他在子女平均数量上无差异的男性少生育13%的子女。这些关联部分但并非完全由有吸引力参与者增加的结婚概率所解释。线性回归分析表明，吸引力的定向选择梯度相对较弱（女性β = 0.06，男性β = 0.07）。这些发现表明，身体吸引力可能与生活在工业化环境中的人类的生殖成功有关。
