What really attracts women to men (and it's not all good looks and cash)

Published on Friday 14 August 2009 22:05

IT COULD help explain why Posh Spice made a beeline for David Beckham, Vanessa Paradis was drawn to Johnny Depp and why Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are such an inseparable pair.

Researchers from St Andrew's University say women are attracted to a masculine version of themselves – explaining why many celebrity couples bear such a strong resemblance to one another.

Psychologists believe that facial similarity may encourage a feeling of trust, suggest that a person is well adapted to their environment and even subtly imply that they have a similar genetic make up.

Psychology department post-doctorate fellow Tamsin Sexton, who carried out the research, said: "We wanted to look at how masculinity and resemblance affected women's view of attractiveness."

The psychologists morphed a selection of male faces to make them look more masculine and more like the women who were taking part in the study to assess how they rated the images for attractiveness. Women were particularly attracted to men who were masculine and whose faces bore a strong resemblance to their own.

"We made the images look more masculine by giving them a bigger brow, a broader jaw and smaller eyes," said Dr Sexton.

"Previous research has often found that women can be attracted to masculine men, but also a bit suspicious of them. However, women tend to trust men more if they look like them.

Dr Sexton said the findings added to existing research about the science of attractiveness.

"It feeds into other research suggesting marriage partners tend to resemble each other. People tend to choose partners who are a little bit like them.

"It may have something to do with genes. Picking somebody that looks like you may mean they have more genes in common with you.

"Another theory is that people change appearance according to their environment – so people who look alike may be well adapted to their environment.

"Or there is the issue of trust – that people tend to trust people who look more like them."

The women looked at facial characteristics such as face shape and specific features including nose shape and eye size. Eye and skin colour were not taken into account in the research.

Researcher Craig Roberts said: "When people rate what's attractive, they have to consider lots of different characteristics. What's really interesting is that masculinity was more important to women's judgments compared with whether the men looked like the women."

The University of Liverpool also contributed to the study, which was published online by the journal Behavioral Ecology.