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A strong positive relationship between reproductive success (offspring count) and status (position in the institutional hierarchy) is demonstrated in a contemporary sample of male university employees (n ¼ 2693). Male academics in leading positions have more children than do other male employees. In female university employees (n ¼ 2073), a negative relationship between status and reproductive success was found, but only if childless women were included in the analysis. Although a positive relationship between male status and offspring count has been predicted by evolutionary theory and was found in animal species and ÔtraditionalÕ human societies, in modern societies most of the studies found no or even a negative relationship between status and reproductive success in males. We suggest that status may be a more important dimension for particular subsamples of modern society than for samples representing entire societies, so that associations might actually differ among subsamples. We suggest that analyses on a small and rather uniform level using modern large-scale hierarchical organizations (such as universities) are candidates for the investigation of appropriate Ôsociety subsetsÕ. Our results may stress the importance of evolutionary predictions and may be of relevance for theoretical and empirical considerations at the levels of economics and administration.

We assessed individual differences in visual attention toward faces in relation to their attractiveness via saccadic reaction times. Motivated by the aim to understand individual differences in attention to faces, we tested three hypotheses: (a) Attractive faces hold or capture attention more effectively than less attractive faces; (b) men show a stronger bias toward attractive opposite-sex faces than women; and (c) blue-eyed men show a stronger bias toward blue-eyed than brown-eyed feminine faces. The latter test was included because prior research suggested a high effect size. Our data supported hypotheses (a) and (b) but not (c). By conducting separate tests for disengagement of attention and attention capture, we found that individual differences exist at distinct stages of attentional processing but these differences are of varying robustness and importance. In our conclusion, we also advocate the use of linear mixed effects models as the most appropriate statistical approach for studying inter-individual differences in visual attention with naturalistic stimuli.

During human ontogeny, testosterone has powerful organizational and activational effects on the male organism. This has led to the hypothesis that the prenatal environment (as studied through the second-to-fourth digit ratio, 2D : 4D) is not only associated with robust adult male faces that are perceived as dominant and masculine, but also that there is an activational step during puberty. To test the latter, we collected digit ratios and frontal photographs of right-handed Caucasian boys (aged 4 -11 years) along with age, body height and body weight. Using geometric morphometrics, we show a significant relationship between facial shape and 2D : 4D before the onset of puberty (explaining 14.5% of shape variation; p ¼ 0.014 after 10 000 permutations, n ¼ 17). Regression analyses depict the same shape patterns as in adults, namely that the lower the 2D : 4D, the smaller and shorter the forehead, the thicker the eyebrows, the wider and shorter the nose, and the larger the lower face. Our findings add to previous evidence that certain adult male facial characteristics that elicit attributions of masculinity and dominance are determined very early in ontogeny. This has implications for future studies in various fields ranging from social perception to life-history strategies.

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