An international team of researchers appears to have proven the old adage about shorter men being insecure.

The team asked 100 men and 100 women how jealous they were in their relationships and asked another 119 male and 230 female students their responses to someone flirting with their partner.

“Taller men tended to be less jealous when confronted with socially influential, physically dominant, or physically attractive rivals,” the researchers write in a paper in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. By contrast the least jealous women were of average height.

The story has been getting wide pick up in the media after being originally publicised by New Scientist. Women’s magazine Marie Claire is asking its readers, “Does your man suffer from ‘short man syndrome’?” Currently the poll stands at yes 22%, no 78%.

Original research in the Nature office does not support a height-jealousy axis. One short Nature reporter said: “I’ve had several girlfriends cheat on me and I didn’t really care.”