Attractiveness is all in the face

Contrary to popular opinion, its not that killer body that the opposite sex takes into account at first glance, but your face - and this happens especially if you are a man.

London, May 14 : Contrary to popular opinion, it's not that killer body that the opposite sex takes into account at first glance, but your face - and this happens especially if you are a man.

To find our how much faces and bodies contribute to someone's overall attractiveness, researchers from the University of Western Australia in Crawley led by Marianne Peters assessed 12 women and 12 men as they looked at photographs.

The volunteers were asked to rate attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 7, as researchers measured the face-only and body-only ratings to see how well the group predicted the "entire person" ratings.

They found that contrary to popular belief, faces are more apparently more important to people, especially women, reports the New Scientist.

The findings of the study showed that for the fairer sex, 52 per cent of the attractiveness score was made up by the face rating, while for bodies it was 24 per cent.

And, the tendency was similar when it came to men, as 47 percent rated a woman's overall attractiveness by her looks, while 32 percent rated her on her body.

As for why women tend to focus more on the face, well according to the researchers that's because the face, being a mirror to the soul, gives women emotional cues which are key to partner suitability.

The study appears in the journal Animal Behaviour.

ANI