PALE, red faced men like Outlander’s Sam Heughan are highly desirable to women, according to a top Scots academic.
David Perrett, psychology professor at St Andrews University in Fife, found that facial redness increases a man’s sexually attractive to females.
But the research, which Perrett co-wrote, also found that balance is key because faces that are too red can often work as a turn off due to their association with anger.
Perrett notes: “Faces convey a wide range of important cues that are detected and interpreted as social information to influence person perception.
“On the other hand (too much) male facial redness also contributes to perceptions of aggression, dominance and anger, which might highly influence attractiveness ratings.”
During the study, Professor Perrett and his team of academics asked more than 500 hetrosexual females to look at images of anonymous, caucasian faces with a range of facial redness.
They then judged the photographs on overall attractiveness, sexual attractiveness and rate them on how honest and intelligent the women believed each man was.
The research shows that redder faces were deemed to be healthier than neutral faces.
And almost one third were also seen as being more sexually attractive to the participants.
Honesty and intelligence ratings also increased.
The research followed a past study conducted by Professor Perrett where he found that facial redness also influenced perceptions of attractiveness for men viewing women.
Previous research showed that men seeing red in a picture, whether it be on clothing, make-up or just in the background, made females more attractive to them.
For 10,000 years, the colour red has been associated with love, sex, passion and fertility.
