Data from: Women's attractiveness is linked to expected age at menopause

A great number of studies have shown that features linked to immediate
fertility explain a large part of the variance in female attractiveness.
This is consistent with an evolutionary perspective, as men are expected
to prefer females at the age at which fertility peaks (at least for
short-term relationships) in order to increase their reproductive success.
However, for long-term relationships, a high residual reproductive value
(the expected future reproductive output, linked to age at menopause)
becomes relevant as well. In that case, young age AND late menopause are
expected to be preferred by men. However, the extent to which facial
features provide cues to the likely age at menopause has never been
investigated so far. Here, we show that expected age at menopause is
linked to facial attractiveness of young women. As age at menopause is
heritable, we used the mother’s age at menopause as a proxy for her
daughter’s expected age of menopause. We found that men judged faces of
women with a later expected age at menopause as more attractive than those
of women with an earlier expected age at menopause. This result holds when
age, cues of immediate fertility and facial ageing were controlled for.
Additionally, we found that the expected age at menopause was not
correlated with any of the other variables considered (including immediate
fertility cues and facial ageing). Our results show the existence of a new
correlate of women’s facial attractiveness, expected age at menopause,
which is independent from immediate fertility cues and facial ageing.

大量研究表明，与即时生育力（immediate fertility）相关的特征能够解释女性面部吸引力（facial attractiveness）的大部分变异。这与进化生物学视角相一致：就短期择偶关系而言，男性理应偏好处于生育力峰值年龄段的女性，以提升自身的繁殖成功率。然而，对于长期择偶关系来说，高剩余生殖价值（residual reproductive value，即与绝经年龄（age at menopause）相关的预期未来生殖产出）同样具有重要意义。在此情境下，男性更偏好既年轻又较晚绝经的女性。但迄今为止，尚无研究探讨面部特征能否传递出个体绝经年龄的潜在线索。本研究证实，年轻女性的预期绝经年龄与其面部吸引力存在关联。由于绝经年龄具有遗传相关性，我们采用母亲的绝经年龄作为其女儿预期绝经年龄的代理变量。研究结果显示，男性会认为预期绝经年龄较晚的女性面部更具吸引力，且这一效应在控制了年龄、即时生育力线索与面部衰老程度后依然成立。此外，我们还发现，预期绝经年龄与本次研究纳入的其他变量（包括即时生育力线索与面部衰老程度）均无相关性。本研究结果表明，女性面部吸引力存在一项新的关联因素——预期绝经年龄，且该因素独立于即时生育力线索与面部衰老程度之外。