• Psychologists timed young people in front of mirror and tracked their gaze
  • Discovered that males look at themselves for five seconds longer than women
  • Group of 68 adults were recruited to help experts evaluate mirror exposure therapy 
  •  The 29 men in the study spent 80 seconds on average looking at their own faces 

Women are used to hearing grumbles about taking too long in front of the mirror but a new study has found that modern men are the vainer sex.

Psychologists who timed young people in front of the mirror and tracked their gaze discovered that males look at themselves for about five seconds longer than females.

‘Gaze duration was associated with self-esteem,’ said study co-author Jonas Potthoff, from the University of Graz in Austria.

The discovery came after a group of 68 adults, mostly students with an average age of 23, were recruited to help experts evaluate mirror exposure therapy, a treatment used for people with eating disorders or a negative body image.

The team wanted to find out if personality traits such as self-esteem and narcissism affected the way people looked at themselves in the mirror – and the time they spent focusing on their faces.