The Look of Love

Studs finish first and women who make love with good-looking men enjoy much better sex lives than those who bed down with average-looking, "normal" men. So reports a study presented at the American Psychological Society annual conference in Miami.

Florida Atlantic University psychologist Dr. Todd Shackleford, who co-authored the study, found that while many women are driven by an evolutionary urge to team with life partners for financial security and the ability to parent future offspring, men's looks also played a critical role in their selection of who will father their children.

Dr. Shackleford proposes that women have more orgasms with better-looking men due to an evolutionary connection between good looks and higher quality genes. And women who experience orgasms have greater chances to conceive because the muscle contractions during and after climax helps propel the sperm to reach the egg.

The researchers interviewed nearly 400 women, ages 17 to 62, in committed heterosexual relationships that varied in length from one month to 40 years. In the anonymous study, women were asked if they had had an orgasm during their last sexual encounter; they then rated their partner's looks.

The findings show that the female orgasm has evolved as a manipulative strategy to select the sperm of males who possess the highest quality genes, says Dr. Shackleford. In addition, the study found that the good looks quotient of their partner was a much more acute predictor of healthy sex lives than women's general satisfaction with the relationship.

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