Facial Attractiveness Preferences: a possible mechanism for understanding the differential reproduction of women with and without androphilic sons

Abstract

The Sexually Antagonistic Gene Hypothesis (SAGH) holds that a gene can be reproductively detrimental to one sex, but be selected for so long as it is reproductively beneficial to the other sex. Consistent with this, research indicates that the female relatives of androphilic males exhibit elevated reproduction compared to those without androphilic male relatives. This thesis addresses whether the mating psychology of women with androphilic sons differs from that of women with no androphilic sons. If differences in preferences for certain male facial features exist, this might explain why the female kin of male androphiles produce more offspring compared to the female kin of male gynephiles. I found that women with and without androphilic sons did not differ in their preferences for a variety of male facial features, indicating that differences in mating psychology not accounting for the differential reproduction of these two groups of women.