Sex appeal of Action Man scars revealed

They give Action Man a certain ruggedness and bestow instant testosterone on movie heroes, but according to psychologists, facial scars can also make men more attractive to the opposite sex.

Men with mild facial scars were typically ranked as more appealing by women who were looking for a brief relationship, though they were not considered better as marriage material, a study found.

In the same experiments, women with facial scars were judged to be as attractive as those without, the researchers said.

Psychologists at the universities of Liverpool and Stirling asked 115 women and 64 men to rate the attractiveness of eight opposite sex strangers. Half were asked to look at original face shots, while the other half viewed images that had been digitally manipulated to add scars to their cheeks, jawbones or foreheads.

While facial scars made no difference to the perceived attractiveness of women, scarred men ranked 5.7 percentage points higher in the appeal ratings than those with undamaged skin.

"A large scar is unlikely to make you more attractive, but there are some scars that women do seem to find appealing. There's the whole James Bond thing, where a person is attractive but probably not the best marriage material," said Robert Burriss, a psychologist at the University of Liverpool who led the study.

The study appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.