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.

中文翻译：

---

人类的身体吸引力和生殖成功：来自 20 世纪后期美国的证据。

外貌吸引力与交配行为有关，但它在当代人类生殖成功中的作用却很少受到关注。在威斯康星纵向研究（1937 年至 1940 年间出生的 1244 名女性和 997 名男性）中，我们检查了从 18 岁左右拍摄的照片评估的吸引力是否能预测 53-56 岁的亲生子女数量。在女性中，吸引力以非线性方式预测更高的生育成功率，因此有吸引力（第二高的四分位数）女性比不那么有吸引力的女性生育 16% 的孩子，而非常有吸引力（最高四分位数）的女性生育的孩子多 6%。在男性中，存在阈值效应，因此吸引力最低四分位数的男性的孩子比平均孩子数量没有差异的其他人少 13%。这些关联部分但不完全是由有吸引力的参与者增加的结婚概率引起的。线性回归分析表明吸引力的方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。