You probably haven’t given much thought to the shape of your face. But now you might want to, because a new study suggests it can say a lot about your sex life.
Researchers at Nipissing University, Ontario, Canada, interviewed 145 undergrad students in relationships about their sex lives, asking them questions about how often they wanted to have sex and how many times they masturbated in a typical month.
As it turns out, students with a larger facial width-to-height ratios, or wider faces, reported they did these things more than the students who had narrower faces.
So what does that mean? The study found that men with wider faces have higher levels of testosterone. The researchers suggested this was correlated with a higher incidence of promiscuity, a higher sex drive, and a greater willingness to be unfaithful.
This isn’t the first time that face shape has been linked to various personality traits. (In fact, there’s a term for this type of research: it’s called physiognomy, or the study of the face.)
Previous research, for instance, has indicated that men with wider face shapes are more likely to have higher levels of testosterone and aggression. But physiognomy is not a perfect science, so such research should be taken with a grain of salt.
That’s why it’s important to note that if you do end up caught with your pants around your ankles, the last excuse you should use for your behavior is your face shape. (We know someone’s gonna try it.) Ultimately, you’re in control of your actions — not your face.
