Lack of shuteye can make people seem less attractive

Experts used eye-tracking technology that is able to detect what a person is looking at in real-time to study 45 young men and women. Participants spent one night with no sleep at all and one night with the chance to sleep for eight hours before their eye movements were measured in the morning.

Study author Christian Benedict, from Uppsala University in Sweden, said: "The finding that sleep-deprived subjects in our experiment rated healthy-looking, neutral and fearful faces as less attractive indicates that sleep loss is associated with more negative social impressions of others.

"This could result in reduced motivation to interact socially."

Co-author Lieve van Egmond said: "When sleep-deprived, our research subjects spend less time fixating on faces."

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