Are wider faced men more self-sacrificing?

Picture a stereotypical tough guy and you might imagine a man with a broad face, a square jaw, and a stoical demeanor. Existing research even supports this association, linking wider, more masculine faces with several less-than-cuddly characteristics, including perceived lack of warmth, dishonesty, and lack of cooperation. But a new study suggests that men with these wide, masculine faces aren't always the aggressive tough guys they appear to be.

"Men with wider faces have typically been portrayed as 'bad to the bone,'" says psychologist Michael Stirrat. But he and David Perrett wondered whether the relationship between facial width and personality was really so simple. They suspected that men who look aggressive and untrustworthy might actually be good guys in some contexts.

In their new study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, they predicted that more physically robust men, as identified by a wider face, would be self-sacrificing when their group was competing with another group.