Women's reproductive success and the preference for Dark Triad in men's faces ★

Women's preference for male partners that signal either genetic or parenting advantages for their progeny is predicted to be favoured by natural selection. However, currently there are few studies on how such mate preferences are associated with women's reproductive success. We examined whether preferences for the Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) in men's faces were related to reproductive success in contemporary women. Because out of three Dark Triad features narcissism is most clearly associated with social success and physical and psychological health benefits in men, we predicted that women's preference for narcissism could be most strongly related to their reproductive success. In line with this, we found that women with preference for high narcissistic men's faces gave birth to more offspring whilst controlling for their age, sexual openness (sociosexuality) and self-rated health. Moreover, women with strong preference for Machiavellian male faces reported fewer offspring than their same-aged peers with weak preference, whereas preference for psychopathic men's faces was unrelated to women's current number of offspring. These findings suggest that in modern society, women's preference for some of the Dark Triad traits in men may be related to their reproductive success.