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Faces of trustworthy people "look" more similar to our own, a new study suggests.

Researchers said the latest findings show feelings of similarity towards others extend beyond social closeness and into physical characteristics.

In the study, researchers showed participants images in which varying percentages of the volunteer's faces were morphed with that of one of two other people. Researchers were then asked to decide whether each photograph contained more of their face or more of the others.

Afterwards, participants played bargaining games with the other two "people".  Trust was reciprocated in one game and betrayal happened in another. Afterwards, participants carried out the photo morph task again. Researchers found that participants perceived the trustworthy player to be more physically similar to them than the untrustworthy one.

"Recent studies show that when a person looks similar to ourselves, we automatically believe they are trustworthy. Here we show for the first time that the reverse is also true. When a person is shown to be more trustworthy, it can lead us to perceive that person as looking more similar to ourselves," researcher Harry Farmer said in a news release.

Researchers said the results might even have important implications for social relationships.

"Our results show how our perceptions of similarity between us and others extend beyond objective physical characteristics, into the specific nature of social interactions that we have," Professor Manos Tsakiris said in a news release.

"It may be that our experience of facial similarity tracks information about genetic relatedness. If so, our results suggest that evidence of trust in others also serves as a cue to kinship," co-author Ryan McKay added.

The findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.