International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics

How fertile a person is can be dictated by personality, a new study has revealed.

Women who are neurotic and extrovert men are more likely to produce more children in societies with traditionally high birth rates, researchers from the University of Sheffield in the UK found.

Researchers also found a link between maternal personality and their offspring's physical condition.

Neurotic women are more likely to have malnourished children - those with a decreased body mass index - implying that the trait could prove to be costly to family life too.

The study was carried out on 65 families in four rural villages in Senegal, Africa, over a month-long period.

Virpi Lummaa, from the department of animal and plant sciences at Sheffield, said: "Our results show that personality predicts family size differently in men and women, and those men with largest families have personality aspects different from the women with the largest families."

According to UNICEF, the fertility rate in Senegal is five. This is indicative of the number of children that would be born per woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years.

Posted by Alexandra George