Men are often advised to stand out from the crowd to attract women—there can be only one alpha male. Women, on the other hand, are told not to be too weird. This advice has sunk in: a 2006 study found that when in a mating mind-set, men become less conformist and women become more so. A paper in the June issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, however, reports that we have it all wrong.

New research refutes one of our oldest (and dopiest) stereotypes about what men find attractive in the opposite sex