A new study, conducted by the researchers at the AlphaGalileo Foundation, claims that the facial features of women may determine how long their relationship would work.
According to the study, men tend to prefer women having feminine features for their short-term relationship, commonly known as a 'fling.'
This study, being one of its kind, investigated how men's preferences for different women changed, when they were asked to consider partners for short-term and long-term relationships.
Their experiment was conducted online, and took in 393 heterosexual men, of which, 207 men were already in a relationship. They were then showed a series of paired images of women, whose faces had been transformed to show both-masculine and feminine traits.
The men were then asked to rate which image they found most attractive for long-term and short-term relationships.
The results revealed that men who were currently in a relationship tended to find women having feminine features more attractive for short-term relationships.
"It's interesting that these findings are comparable to previous research that indicates women's preference for masculine male faces are higher if they were judging for short-term relationships. Our findings point to a similar preference in men. When they already have a partner, men find more feminine women more attractive for short-term relationships," Anthony Little, University of Stirling and Benedict Jones, explained.
"There are several possible explanations; perhaps some men are inclined to take a long-term partner whilst still attempting to cheat with other, more feminine, women. Or maybe once a long-term partner is secured, the potential cost of being discovered may increase a man's choosiness regarding short-term partners relative to unpartnered men."
Another part of the study revealed that men who thought themselves to be attractive had a preference for feminine women than women who didn't consider themselves to be attractive. A similar effect was also predominant in women, where women who were attractive were much choosier in their preference for men.
"Across the two studies attractive men were found to be more discriminating in their preferences for a woman's facial femininity," Anthony concluded.
