It might seem like facial hair on men is part of a trend, or that a certain “type” of guy tends toward it more than another, but is that true?

What this recent study found about the motivations behind growing a beard might surprise you, though.

The researchers found that having a beard could correlate with social status desires, or even signify a commitment to family.

Facial hair is a  dimorphic feature in humans, which means it is more pronounced in males than in females.

Scientists posit that facial hair was meant to signal social status among males, as well as perhaps make males more attractive to potential mates.

It could reveal age, dominance, or their place in the group, which leads to the conclusion that the way a man manages it could be part of a self-promotional strategy.

Still, it’s expensive and time-consuming, so researchers at the University of Silesia in Poland and the University of Padova in Italy wanted to know what actually motivates modern men to maintain facial hair.

“Studies conducted so far have shown that people give different characteristics related to fundamental social motives to men with different types of facial hair. However, research on perceptions of men’s facial hair provides mixed findings and there is a need for more research on the topic to help clarify this ambiguity.”

People see bearded men as both healthier and better fighters, and they are also regarded as more trustworthy and friendly.

This suggests positive attributes like disease-avoidance, self-preservation, and good social standing.

They also can be seen as more aggressive or dominant, though, which could speak more to status-seeking motives.

Interestingly, they also found that people regard bearded men as being better fathers.

“We hypothesized that men’s striving to realize fundamental social motives might manifest through increased interest in facial hair enhancement. Therefore, we predicted positive correlations between facial hair enhancement motivation and orientation on such fundamental social motives as self-protection, status-seeking, mate-seeking, and kin care related to children.”

The team surveyed 414 men between 18 and 40 years of age to dive deeper into this observation.

They completed questionnaires about their facial hair and the different motivations behind growing it in the first place.

Those motivations included hair enhancement, social, gender roles, and competition.

Overall, they found that the more facial hair a mad had, the more likely they were to value keeping long-term relationships.

They were also more interested in taking care of their families than men with less facial hair.

“Previous findings indicated that observers tend to perceive  bearded men as having more parenting skills. Therefore, having more facial hair may be used by men to inform other people that their social motives shift from focusing on mating market to focusing on long-term romantic relationships and family.”

They did not find a strong link between having a beard and a desire to display more masculinity.

“The mixture of affiliative and competitive motivations which correlated with facial hair enhancement also want to present themselves as valuable and reliable allies and friends.”

The authors suggest that future studies should focus on the different types of facial hair and how it is shaped to learn more.

And as always with self-reporting studies, there could exist an inherent bias in how participants self-report.

This study, though, does its job providing insight as to why beards continue to be in fashion.

And they likely won’t disappear anytime soon.

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