Children are more likely to true attractive adults, claims a new study. (Thinkstock)New research from Harvard University suggests that children are more likely to trust good-looking adults as opposed to unattractive ones.

The study, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, found that children showed bias towards attractive adults when seeking out reliable information.

"When learning about the world, children rely heavily on information provided to them by other people," says lead researcher Igor Bascandziev. "Previous studies have shown children can be influenced by a range of factors such as whether the adult was correct in the past or if they are familiar to them."

The researchers conducted a two-part experiment on 32 children aged four and five. The children were shown 12 photographs of white women between 18 and 29. The women had been previously rated according to attractiveness by a panel of 48 university students.

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First, children were shown six unfamiliar objects and asked to name them by seeking advice from an adult they thought might know the answer. They were then shown a picture of an unattractive and an attractive woman and told to pick who to seek advice from.

In the second part of the experiment, the children were told the names that both the attractive and unattractive women gave to the object. Again, the kids were asked who they thought was right.

Researchers found that the children, particularly girls, showed a preference for the attractive face over the unattractive face.

"We see from the results that children and especially girls have more trust in attractive faces, even though there are no obvious reasons why people with more attractive faces would be more knowledgeable about object labels," Bascandziev says.

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He suggests that the gender difference could be related to that fact that previous research shows females have superior face perception and place greater emphasis on faces when initially meeting someone.

This is far from the first study to suggest that people are biased towards attractive individuals.

Canadian research from 2011 finds that we assume attractive people are more intelligent, competent and friendly.

And research from this year points to the fact that attractive people are more likely to be leaders in their careers due to a greater number of job offers and pay increases.

Watch the video below about a woman who was deemed too attractive for politics.