Men with deep, gravely voices are more likely to get the girls, according to new research.

It will come as no surprise to most women that George Clooney's manly growl is more attractive than a Joe Pasquale squeak. Now Sarah Evans, a psychology lecturer and PhD student at Newcastle's Northumbria University, has discovered why.

She found that women consider deep voices more attractive, dominant, masculine, sexy, assertive, confident and friendly.

Male listeners also rated deep male voices as more desirable than high-pitched voices for attributes such as dominance, masculinity and confidence.

Women with husky voices - like movie star Minnie Driver - are rated sexy by men but not the kind of girl to take home to mum.

And there are exceptions that confound the rule - David Beckham's reedy tones should mean he's more geek than Golden Balls.

Men's voices are significantly deeper than women's due to the action of testosterone and the descent of the larynx in the vocal tract during puberty.

Sarah's research has revealed a deep male voice is a signal to females of a man' s hormonal and genetic quality while it signals social dominance to other male rivals.

She said: "It is well established that many animals use vocal calls to attract females and intimidate their male competitors but this has yet to be looked at in any depth vis--vis human beings.

My research is examining whether the human voice may be an important but so far over-looked factor in human attraction and male competition for potential female mates.''

The interim findings also revealed that physical and vocal attractiveness seem to be related.

When participants listened to male voices and then independently viewed photographs of the speakers' faces without hearing them speak, men with attractive faces were also found to have attractive voices.

This could be because the male hormone testosterone which determines the pitch of the voice also determines some facial features such as a strong jawline which most women find attractive.

Sarah said: "The general rule is that most attractive men have deep, attractive voices - George Clooney, Brad Pitt etc all have deeper voices than most women.

"Joe Pasquale doesn't have a deep voice, and I would say that he probably isn't as attractive to women.

"There are of course exceptions to this - David Beckham is definitely one of them. Women find him very attractive, yet he has quite a high pitched squeaky voice.

"I think it's also important to note that when he speaks it is quite a shock to hear his voice - it's not what we expect, because we automatically assume attractive men have deep voices.

"The type of falsetto that the Bee Gees do isn't generally thought of as masculine or dominant.

"Equally it is interesting to find that women with deeper huskier voices are considered quite sexy - the Mariella Frostrupp or Minnie Drivers - but it is also interesting to note that they are seen perhaps more as good time girls.

"Whereas women with the higher pitched voices tend to be what men go for as long term, mating partners. "Men might find the huskier voiced women as attractive short term partners, but not someone they want to go on and have children with - they sound quite rough, not that healthy - it's about health and genetic quality.

"The deeper voice in a woman signals something different to women with higher voices."