Scientists: Men can identify a cheating woman just by looking at her photograph

Men are able to work out whether a woman is a cheater simply by examining a photograph of her, scientists have claimed.

Snap judgements shown to be a surprisingly accurate way of working out whether ladies are heartbreakers or marriage makers.

In an experiment destined to strike fear into the hearts of lusty ladies the world over, researchers at the University of Western Australias suggested men have a surprising ability to spot trouble before she walked into his life.

Dr Samantha Leivers asked men to look at 17 pairs of photographs where one woman was a lady of cast-iron fidelity and the other was, well, the opposite, having reported running out on their partner for "extra-pair copulations" with another chap.

The sex doctor found that in between 55% and 59% of the tests, men were able to guess which woman was the heartbreaker.

This result is "statistically significant but modest", Dr Leivers said.

"We don't expect them to be 100 per cent accurate when they are literally just looking at someone's face for a few seconds," Dr Leivers said.

"The fact that they're showing any accuracy from this limited information is pretty cool."

"We show for the first time that men's judgments of faithfulness from images of women can contain a kernel of truth when they are able to directly compare images in a forced choice task," she continued.

Men tend to look for evidence of trustworthiness to make their snap judgement as well as attractiveness, with pretty, unreliable-looking people deemed more likely to play away.

Of course, we have long known women can tell whether a man is a cheater or not.

Although some cynics would say this trick is as simple as uncovering the fact he's a bloke.