Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Apparently, women are getting more beautiful...

According to Markus Jokela and researchers at the University of Helsinki, "beautiful" women had up to 16% more children than less attractive women. The study followed 1,244 women and 997 men in the U.S. over the course of 40 years, and their attractiveness was determined from photos that were taken during the study.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, had previously reported that good-looking parents were 36% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first-born child, and suggested that this was due to an evolutionary strategy that has been programmed into human DNA. Kanazawa argues that since physical attractiveness is inherited, if more attractive parents have more daughters, then women will gradually become more physically attractive than men over the course of several generations. He claims that good looks benefit women more than men, hence the evolutionary bias. Men, on the other hand, don't need to be as good looking, but there's an evolutionary pressure for them to be successful, because that's what women are looking for in potential mates. Kanazawa's previous research has also suggested that scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who have "male brains" tend to have more sons than daughters. Hmm...

I can't help thinking about all the "beautiful" celebrities who have average-looking kids...

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