Thursday, 21 Aug, 2008 Science

In case you want to identify a man's level of aggressiveness just look at his face. According to a new study the rounder is a man's face the more aggressive he is.

A team of Canadian specialists performed a study and discovered that the shape of a man's face depends on the level of testosterone, male sex hormone. A rounder face means higher level of testosterone and thus more aggressiveness.

Scientists say that the shape of the face was honed by evolution as an indicator of the tendency to act aggressively.

"(Our) findings suggest that people can make accurate inferences about others' personality traits and behavioral dispositions based on certain signals conveyed by the face," said Cheryl McCormick of Brock University, lead researcher.

The results of the study, performed by McCormick and his colleagues, are based on the examination of the aggression level in 90 professional hockey players. They linked the facial ratio with the number of penalty minutes received in one game. Penalties were given to sportsmen who showed aggressive behavior through slashing, elbowing, fighting and the like. Scientists discovered that the rounder a sportsman's face was the more aggressiveness he showed. The study did not find any connections between the face shape and aggression in women.

"The facial structure of a man provides an indication of how aggressive he will be in a competitive situation. So, we are able to predict, with some accuracy, the behavior of men on the basis of their facial features," researchers said.

The study's findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.

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