Unfaithful Men Can Be Detected by Their Faces, Science Says
Cheating Guys Can Be Detected by Their Faces
Everyone knows that guy. You and your friends watch in despair as he runs around on his partner, cleverly covering up his infidelity via creative storytelling and a deleted text message or two.
RELATED: The Different Levels of Cheating
But what if it’s no use? What if people can identify that man as a cheater just by looking at him? That’s the result of a new study from Australia, which found that both males and females can identify cheating men simply by examining their faces. The results have been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
CHEAT SHEET
Surveying 1,500 heterosexual Caucasian men and women aged 18 to 75, researchers from the University of Western Australia presented participants with photographs of 189 Caucasian adults (101 men and 88 women).
The subject of each photograph reported the number of times they had cheated on their partner while the participants were asked to rate — on a 10-point scale — how likely each of the pictured individuals was to have been unfaithful
Weirdly, participants — both male and female — had an above-chance accuracy in guessing the unfaithfulness of men, but not women. The phenomenon was modest but significant, and it came as a surprise to the researchers.
“We found above-chance accuracy in unfaithfulness judgments of same-sex faces, but only for men rating men's faces and not women rating women's faces. Our results were not as expected,” they wrote in their paper.
RELATED: Can Cheating Be Healthy for a Relationship?
So what’s going on here? Corresponding author Dr. Yong Zhi Foo told the West Australian that the connection between men’s faces and infidelity was related to their masculinity. Participants were more likely to believe a man has been unfaithful if he had more manly features, such as a wider face.
“Facial features that typically define a more masculine face include a stronger jaw and brow line, and thinner lips,” he told the paper. More manly faces are linked to higher levels of testosterone, which for men can mean more risk-taking and in turn a greater propensity to cheat on their partners.
As for the detection, researchers think it probably comes down to evolution. “The level of accuracy could have biological significance as an evolved adaptation for identifying potential cheaters and poachers,” they say in the study.
Regardless, researchers warn that you shouldn’t use this as an excuse to walk around making first impression judgments about someone’s faithfulness.
HOW TO HANDLE CHEATING
It goes without saying that infidelity can be hugely damaging to any relationship. But why do people do it? The reasons presented in an Ashley Madison survey from earlier this year ranged from wanting more sexual fulfillment to trying to keep the family together (seriously).
You Might Also Dig:
-
Cheating
news
Dating