It is possible to define a male cheater by face, say scientists

Even the years spent playing poker will not help!

Sad news from the fields of science! According to the study, it is easy to calculate the cheater by the expression of the face. And, what is even sadder, this applies only to men.

The experiment involved 1516 adults (61% of them were men). During the study, participants were shown photographs of men and women of the same race as they asked the same question: “How likely this man / woman will be cheating?” It was possible to answer in the range from “Unlikely” to “With a high degree of probability”.

All people who agreed to submit their pictures for the experiment, cheated. Moreover, the authors of the study emphasize that this could be a classic betrayal, that is, have sex with a stranger, while being in an exclusive relationship (just in case, I will explain that this is sometimes called monogamous relations). Or a situation that the authors of the experiment call “poaching”, that is, having sex with a person about whom you know for sure that he is in a relationship.

It turned out that most of the men and women can easily calculate the male traitors just by looking at their faces in the photo. However, neither men nor women could recognize cheaters among women.

The authors of the study suggested that such an ability developed in the course of evolution in order to reduce the likelihood of engaging with the wrong partner. The authors, however, have not yet figured out why this concerns exclusively male physiognomy.

Also, the authors of the study state that, since the experiment was conducted exclusively among white cis-gender men and women, it is possible that the conclusions can only be applied to this group. But in any case, the authors note that even if the ability to determine the propensity to change by appearance also exists, it is rather limited.

By Cindy
July 19, 2019

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