Scientists have found that a simple test can determine a man's intentions — and the answer is all in the eyes.
If he maintains eye contact for long periods, he views his date as a potential long-term partner. But if his gaze strays regularly from the face to the body, the prospects of anything more than a brief fling are slim.
The £60,000 (Dh358,640) study found that bodies were half as important and faces considerably more crucial if men were seeking a life partner.
Psychologist Dr Anthony Little, of Stirling University, said: "If you are looking for long-term relationships, you are looking for a friendly, humorous, cooperative and pleasant partner — information we get from faces.
"But when it comes to short-term relationships, men are not so bothered about whether someone has a nice-looking face, the body becomes a bit more important. They shift their attention."
In the study, which was carried out with Dr Tom Currie of Tokyo University, ten male and female models were asked to pose. Tests were then carried out on the internet with 127 male and 133 female volunteers, each looking at images of models from the opposite sex. They were asked to rate each model's attractiveness, both for a long-term relationship and also for a fling.
First, they rated separate images of body and face, before finally seeing and rating pictures showing both. Scoring was on a scale of one to seven.
The researchers found that when looking for a steady relationship, just 20 per cent of men gave higher scores to images of women's bodies than they did to pictures of faces. But that jumped to 40 per cent when they were asked to rate the models' attractiveness for a short-term affair.
Dr Little said: "In both sexes, faces were more important than bodies in determining who the volunteers found attractive overall. Scores for facial beauty were a better predictor of the model's overall rating than scores for bodily attractiveness."
Being asked to evaluate partners for long-term or short-term relationships made no difference to whether the female volunteers rated faces or bodies higher, the researchers said.
A short-term relationship was defined as "a single date accepted on the spur of the moment or maybe an affair within a long-term relationship".
A partner for a long-term relationship was "someone you may want to move in with and someone you may, at some point, wish to marry".
