Be helpful to attract prospective partners this Valentine's Day

London, Feb 14 (ANI): For those wondering how to impress their prospective partners this Valentine's day, being helpful may prove to be a great mantra.

Researchers at University of Sussex suggest that changing the way one acts, rather than the looks, can make one more appealing to the opposite sex.

The researchers have found that volunteers subconsciously rated faces as more attractive if they felt their owner's behaviour had been beneficial.

During the study, 64 volunteers were first asked to rate the attractiveness of a set six "average-looking" faces, which appeared on a computer screen on a scale of minus 100 to plus 100.

They were then asked to identify dots, which would appear on either the left or right side of the screen.

Before it was shown, faces appeared looking either to the left or right. The volunteers asked to concentrate on the dots.

However, they were then later asked to rate the faces again based on how attractive they thought they were.

They found that almost 57 per cent found a face more attractive if it had pointed in the correct direction of the dot.

The results also showed that faces of the opposite sex were more effective at directing participants' attention.

"In other words, women pay more attention to where men look and vice versa. The faces that gave accurate cues as to where the target dot appeared increased in attractiveness," the Telegraph quoted Dr. Beena Khurana as saying.

"The traditional belief is that the more we find a face attractive the more we pay attention to it. But here we show that we can cause a face to become attractive as a function of the way it behaves.

"We think that perceived attractiveness is both dynamic and responsive to the behaviour of people," she added.

The findings have been are published in the journal Social Cognition. (ANI)