This is not based on reading someone's facial expression in a social situation, it is based on relatively pernmanent facial features. It has a fairly obvious hormonal explanation.

Face a dead giveaway to sexual attitude

http://news.smh.com.au/face-a-dead-giveaway-to-sexual-attitude/20080410-251q.html

One look is all it took for most people to work out whether someone was keen on a long-term relationship or just a fling, British research has found.

A Durham University-led study has discovered men and women can generally tell the romantic intentions of a member of the opposite sex by their facial expression.

"This shows that these initial impressions may be part of how we assess potential mates - or potential rivals - when we first meet them."

Researchers from Durham, St Andrews and Aberdeen Universities asked participants to judge the attractiveness and attitudes to sex of people from the opposite gender by looking at a photograph of their face.

These judgments were then compared with the actual attitudes and behaviours of the individuals in the photographs, which had been determined through a detailed questionnaire.

The people in the photographs were all in their early 20s.

In the first study sample of 153 participants, 72 per cent of people correctly identified the attitudes from photographs more than half of the time.

However, further questioning showed that the participants were not always confident in their judgments.

The research, published in Evolution and Human Behaviour, also found women who were open to short-term sexual relationships were usually seen by others as more attractive.

Men who were most open to casual sex were generally perceived as being more masculine-looking, with facial features including a squarer jaw, larger nose and smaller eyes.

The findings support previous research carried out by the Durham team which found women see masculine men as more likely to be unfaithful and as worse parents.

Dr Ben Jones, from the University of Aberdeen's Face Research Lab, said previous studies had shown that people could judge a lot from someone's face, including health and personality traits.

"But this really is the first study to show that people are also sensitive to subtle facial signals about the type of romantic relationships that others might enjoy," Dr Jones said.

Meanwhile, Professor David Perrett from the University of St Andrews urged caution.

"While faces do hold cues to sexual attitudes, men should not presume any kind of relationship is wanted from appearance alone since women's choice is what matters," he said.

"Indeed, most women found promiscuous-looking guys unattractive for both short and long-term relationships."

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This would appear to be fairly accurate, but this next statement doesn't make sense.

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How does a male look promiscuous - it's usually what they say that tells you whether they are or not.

Maybe they mean very good looking men - but even so that doesn't seem right either.  Many of these men are very insecure underneath their brilliant exterior, while the plainer looking man seems to have more confidence - maybe because they've had to try harder to attract women.

All up though - it would depend on the individual and what sort of person they're attracted to.

I don't know how you can tell immediately whether a male or female is up to a long term relationship - that seems unpredictable.

freediver wrote on Apr 10^th, 2008 at 8:30pm:



Lol , do you mean sleazy looking FD?

freediver wrote on Apr 10^th, 2008 at 9:03pm:


Mr. Plastic Fantastic