The popular assumption that women's powers of intuition exceed those of men has been overturned by a new study.

　　Psychologists who tested the abilities of more than 15,000 people to identify the sincerity or otherwise of different smiles have concluded that female intuition is a myth.

　　Shown a series of pairs of images of individuals displaying real and fake smiles, men marginally outperformed women. When it came to judging genuine and false expressions of happiness in the opposite sex, male participants did significantly better than females.

　　Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, said: "These findings question the notion that women really are more intuitive than men. Some previous research has found evidence for female intuition but perhaps, over time, men have become more in touch with their intuitive side.

　　"I was surprised, given that women had so much more confidence in their intuition. We thought women would be better but, overall, men just pipped them to the post."

　　Participants were shown 10 pairs of photographs of smiling faces, some of which were partially masked. One of each pair of smiles was genuine and the other was fake. Before studying the faces, participants were asked to rate their intuitive abilities. More women defined themselves as highly intuitive - 77 per cent compared with just 58 per cent of men. However, their claims were not backed up in the experiment this month at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

　　Men were able to pick out 72 per cent of genuine smiles, while women detected 71 per cent. When evaluating sincerity in the faces of the opposite sex, men were right in 76 per cent of cases compared with 67 per cent for women.

　　Dr Wiseman said: "This could be because women experience emotions more fully and are more expressive. If men have a more limited emotional system, this may make it easier for them to fake it."