The study included 1,500 participants from Japan and the UK, who were also either heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

Participants were shown two images of the same face that had been digitally altered to present more masculine or feminine and then asked which they preferred.

Researchers found that participants did not have a preference for men with more masculine features.

This preference was consistent across genders, sexualities and ethnicities, with only the degree of preference changing between groups.

Lead researcher Dr Thora Bjornsdottir of the University of Stirling told Psypost: “Judgements of people’s attractiveness have important consequences. Attractiveness of course influences behaviour in sexual/romantic contexts, but also how people are perceived more generally.”

“This is referred to as the ‘halo effect,’ the phenomenon whereby people who are seen as more attractive are also seen more positively in various other ways, such as being viewed as friendlier and more successful. Given this, understanding what people find attractive is important to understand.”

“Lots of previous research shows that how feminine/masculine faces look strongly predicts their attractiveness,” Bjornsdottir explained.

“However, most of this research has focused on what White heterosexual people find attractive in White faces – and that doesn’t necessarily generalise to other groups of people.

“Here, we wanted to test a more diverse sample to gain a better understanding of what different kinds of people find attractive in faces.

“We therefore recruited bisexual, gay/lesbian, and heterosexual women and men from the UK and Japan, and asked them to make judgements of East Asian and White faces’ attractiveness. Importantly, we experimentally manipulated the faces’ degree of femininity/masculinity.”