In today's pseudoscience news, the quality press is alive with the findings by UK psych researchers that people can fairly reliably tell how slutty someone is merely by looking at a picture of their face.

Psychologists at several UK universities teamed up on the research, which will plainly lead in short order to the betterment of humanity. The link between looking dirty and being a tramp was firmly established for both sexes.

This was done by asking students to fill out questionnaires regarding how likely they were to put out, how often they had done so lately etc. Data from such questionnaires is well known to be solidly grounded in fact. This done, the subjects were photographed.

Other students were then asked to look at the photographed faces and say how easy they reckoned the pictured individual might be. In a staggering 72 per cent of cases, they correctly guessed whether the person in the portrait was or was not a slag. Or at least, whether or not they were likely to admit being a slag on an anonymous questionnaire.

"We may be subtly aware of other people’s attitudes to sex," says Dr Lynda Boothroyd of Durham Uni, lead author of the groundbreaking slapper-spotting research.

"What is far more interesting is that despite the subtlety of the explicit awareness... there is a very strong tendency for women to be attracted to... men who are less interested in casual sex. Men have the opposite preference with female faces; they strongly prefer the [easy] women."

Participants were also asked to rate faces on how masculine/feminine they looked, and the researchers believe this shows a connection between masculine aspect in men and a tendency to be anyone's after a couple of drinks. It seems that the study also supports the idea that "male masculinity" has "negative connotations... for long term partnerships".

In other words, manly men are easy, and women don't like that. Or put another way: "Androgenisation in men is related to less restricted sexual behaviour... women are averse to unrestricted men."

Comfort, then, for any chaps out there who don't look very studly and don't get much action - it seems women are much more attracted to your type. Even if they sometimes have an odd way of showing it.

Read an abstract of the paper here. ®