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While many people assume their choice to wear skinny jeans or grow a beard is based on personal taste or fashion trends, many scientists believe these decisions also reflect our primal need to attract a mate and breed to ensure the survival of our species.

Two economists say their study shows that investors assign higher share values to companies run by attractive chief executives, that these chiefs are paid more than less-appealing counterparts and that the better looking the C.E.O.'s, the better they are at undertaking financially successful deals

A team of researchers who found that people think they are more attractive when drinking alcohol, have scooped an Ig Nobel prize for their work.

Evolutionary biologists reveal that reports of altruism make a potential mate - even for a short-term fling - seem more attractive

Looks aren't everything but love, it would seem, is far from blind. Across cultures and sexes, some features hold greater appeal. "More symmetrical faces do seem to be rated more attractive," says Tamsin Saxton, a senior lecturer at Northumbria University and part of the evolution, perception and behaviour research group. "The theory goes that your genes provide a template for symmetrical bodies, symmetrical face. [When] there's some sort of problem - you get ill or you encounter some problem with the environment - that can sometimes throw the symmetry off a little bit," she says. "So it might be that if you are picking a symmetric partner then you are actually picking somebody whose genes are fairly well suited to the environment around you."

How well do we know ourselves? The intuition that you are your own best judge is strong, yet flawed. The prevailing wisdom in social psychology today is that we are incorrigible self-enhancers. We tend to think we are more attractive, intelligent and agreeable than we really are. Conversely, depressed people have been found to make more realistic estimates of their own abilities, a phenomenon that suggests a touch of optimism may build our resilience to the bumps and bruises of everyday life.

Original study by Pollack

How synthetic hormones change desire in women-and their choice in a mate

he standard narrative of human sexual evolution says: men provide women with goods and services in exchange for women's sexual fidelity. But is that really true or relevant today? Christopher Ryan, the co-author of Sex at Dawn with Cacilda Jethá, takes a deeper look and has quite a few bones to pick with this idea.