If you want to appear sexier to someone else, smile, make eye contact and say, "I really like you."

It's as easy as that, according to psychologist Dr. Ben Jones of Britain's Aberdeen University. Telling someone that you like him or her makes you appear more attractive. Making eye contact and smiling have a similar effect, reports the BBC News.

The study: Jones recruited 230 men and women and asked them to look at flash cards, each of which had a photograph of a face with a different expression. Some were making eye contact--or not. Some were smiling--or not. The volunteers rated each photo for attractiveness.

The results: Jones found that certain social cues signal to others how much we like them and play a crucial role in attraction. Specifically, the preference for the attractive face was much stronger when people were judging those faces that were looking at them and smiling, reports the BBC.

"We like it when attractive people seem to be behaving positively towards us," Dr. Lynda Boothroyd, a psychologist at the University of Durham, told the BBC. "And we seem to end up with people who are on our level in terms of attractiveness. Maybe one of the ways you learn your level of attractiveness is through how other people behave towards you."

The takeaway: Singles can use this ploy to zero in on the most promising potential dates. "Combining information about others' physical beauty with information about how attracted they appear to be to you allows you to allocate your social effort efficiently," Jones told the BBC. In other words, singles can avoid wasting time on attractive individuals who appear unlikely to reciprocate.

The study findings have been published in Psychological Science and presented to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool, England.

--From the Editors at Netscape