Skip to content
Who's in the Video
Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist and intelligence researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Reader in Management at LSE as well as Honorary Research[…]
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

The evolutionary psychologist explains that attractive people tend to have girls, a trend that is making women far more attractive on average than men.

Question: Why do attractive people tend to have daughters

Satoshi Kanazawa: According to the two studies I conducted it is true. The basic contention of the theory is that whenever parents have any trait that they can transmit to their children that are better for boys than for girls then they have more boys. Conversely, whenever parents have some traits that they can transmit to their children that are better for girls than for boys then they tend to have more girls. Being attractive, being physically attractive, is good both for boys and girls, but it’s even better for girls to be attractive than boys–and therefore physically attractive parents, knowing that they can transmit that trait to their children, tend to bias their offspring sex toward girls. 

QuestionDoes this mean that women are becoming more attractive

Satoshi Kanazawa: That is the logical conclusion if more attractive people are more likely to have daughters than sons and if physical attractiveness is heritable then it follows that over time more and more women will be attractive compared to men and that’s the trend that we’re seeing. 


Related