The biggest surprise about tattoos? Women don't think they're sexually attractive

When it comes to the game of love, sometimes men see their tattooed counterparts as competition... But they don't need to worry.

A new study has found that women aren’t actually that bothered about a bit of ink.

Researchers asked 2,500 heterosexual men and women from Poland to look at shirtless men. some of them were digitally modified so a small tattoo was present on their arms.

For example:

Picture: (Andrzej Galbarczyk, Jagiellonian University, and Anna Ziomkiewicz, Polish Academy of Sciences )

The men who were being quizzed, rated the inked gents as more attractive - which implies that they assume women find tattoos attractive.

The women, however, rated the tattooed men as no more or less attractive - and some saw them as worse prospects of potential partners and fathers.

They associated the tattooed men with better health - which would usually correlate with more attraction – but they also saw them as more aggressive, dominant and masculine.

Higher levels of masculinity are associated with higher testosterone, which has been linked to affairs and domestic abuse.

The study states:

The dark side of testosterone-related features perfectly explains why women assessed tattooed men as worse potential partners and parents.

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