ARE YOU A MAN who worries about finding a woman? Well, maybe you shouldn’t be so nervy about it – new research has shown that men who are less stressed are more attractive to the average woman.

A study by the University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland, found that men whose faces alluded to a lower level of the stress hormone cortisol were, as a general rule, more attractive to the opposite sex.

The study clashes with previous findings that higher levels of the male hormone, testosterone, were linked to health – males with a stronger immune system, it appeared, could cope with higher amounts of the male sexual hormone.

Dr Fhionna Moore, who led the research team for the new study, said her team had examined different levels and combinations of cortisol and testosterone and found that it was the presence (or lack thereof) of cortisol that was a bigger factor in whether a man was perceived as ‘attractive’.

43 women were shown two pictures of the same man, one of which was modified to show the subject with greater or lesser quantities of cortisol – that is, looking either more or less stressed.

The attraction to men with lower cortisol, she added, peaked at the fertile phase of a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Moore attributed the level of attraction to a perception that men who were less stressed by the pressures of modern life were more likely to have a strong genetic make-up which could be passed on to children.