How to tell whether a man likes you, just by looking at him: New tests show a man's eyes reveal his true intentions
By Toby Mcdonald
12th January 2010
For women, it's a question as old as the dating game itself: Does he really like me, or is he only after one thing?
Now scientists have found that a simple test can determine a man's intentions - and the answer, it seems, is all in the eyes.
If he maintains eye contact for long periods, he views his date as a potential long-term partner.
But if his gaze strays regularly from the face to the body, the prospects of anything more than a brief fling are slim.
The £60,000 study found that bodies were half as important and faces considerably more crucial if men were seeking a life partner.
Psychologist Dr Anthony Little, of Stirling University, said: 'If you are looking for long-term relationships you are looking for a friendly, humorous, co-operative pleasant partner - information we all get from faces.
'But when it comes to men and short-term relationships they are not so bothered about whether someone has a nice-looking face, the body becomes a bit more important. They shift their attention.'
In the study, which was carried out with Dr Tom Currie of Tokyo University, ten male and female models were asked to pose in their underwear.
Tests were then carried out on the internet with 127 male and 133 female volunteers each looking at images of models from the opposite sex.
They were asked to rate each model's attractiveness both for a long-term relationship such as marriage and also for a short-term fling.
First they rated separate images of body and face, before finally seeing and rating pictures showing both.
If you are looking for long-term relationships you are looking for a friendly, humorous, co-operative pleasant partner - information we all get from facesScoring was on a scale of one to seven, with seven the highest.
The researchers found that when looking for a steady relationship, just 20 per cent of men gave higher scores to images of women's bodies than they did to pictures of faces.
But that jumped to 40 per cent when they were asked to rate the models' attractiveness for a short-term affair.
Dr Little said: 'We were rating individual faces and individual bodies.
'In both sexes, faces were more important than bodies in determining who the volunteers found attractive overall.
'Scores for facial beauty were a better predictor of the model's overall rating than scores for bodily attractiveness.
'The one exception to that is that for men when they are rating for short-term relationships, the actual female body attractiveness becomes more important.'
Being asked to evaluate partners for long-term or short-term relationships made no difference to whether the female volunteers rated faces or bodies higher, the researchers said.
A short-term relationship was defined as 'a single date accepted on the spur of the moment, an affair within a long-term relationship, and the possibility of a one-night stand'.
A partner for a long-term relationship was 'someone you may want to move in with, someone you may consider leaving a current partner to be with, and someone you may, at some point, wish to marry (or enter into a relationship on similar grounds as marriage)'.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... z0cOwGZNNe
