Do Women Prefer 'Manly' Faces?

And they associated the feminine-faced male with this advert:
Attractive, sporty, young, single, male with good sense of humour, professional job, looking to settle, into pubs, clubs etc, seeks someone fun for love and to cherish forever.

The results show that people think men with masculine faces are more likely to pursue short-term relationships, while more feminine-faced men are thought to be interested in long-term relationships. Why? Possibly people think that masculine-faced males are likely to invest less in relationships than feminine-faced men. Or women may select more masculine-faced males for short-term relationships.

Time of the month

Other research at St Andrews suggests a reason why females may show preferences for masculinity in some studies and femininity in others: they employ a mixed mating strategy, which varies with their menstrual cycle.

According to the St Andrews results, women prefer more masculine faces at peak fertility in their cycle - when they are most likely to become pregnant. This implies that women are more attentive to good immunity genes when they are most likely to conceive, and at this time they are less interested in the long-term potential investment from feminine-faced males.

Work on the timing of affairs has shown that flings or affairs tend to coincide with a woman's peak fertility. Putting together the two findings - masculine male faces are more attractive at peak fertility when affairs are most likely and they are also associated with short-term relationships - suggests that women may be making the best of both worlds. They take a more feminine male partner for long-term investment, while occasionally having affairs or short-term relationships with masculine males to provide good immunity genes for some of their children.

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