Women who are attracted to bad boys can blame their terrible choice on their hormones going haywire. Sexier men are more likely to attract an ovulating woman than the more dependable, boring type, suggesting that there's some weird logic to a woman's choice in mate.

It seems that ovulating women trick themselves into believing that men like James Bond - who are rebellious, dangerous and sexy - will live up to their high expectations such as being dependable when they have children, even when the opposite might be true.

The revelation comes after research conducted by Kristina Durante, of The University of Texas at San Antonio, found that women were knowingly selecting bad boys and motivating their choice with delusional expectations of reliability from such men.

And it's all thanks to hormones.

"When looking at the sexy cad through ovulation goggles, Mr. Wrong looked exactly like Mr. Right,"  Durante told LiveScience.  

Durante conducted two experiments - one in which she asked women to look at dating profile of men,  motivating why they found certain men attractive and whether they thought they'd be the dependable type. Women who were ovulating readily motivated their choices for bad boys by insisting that they'd be dependable when the time called for it.

In the second experiment, Durante exposed women to male actors who played the role of sexy dandy or straight-laced dad twice - once during ovulation and once when they were not.

The results showed that women readily chose the sexy dandy during their peak fertility, sticking uncompromisingly to their delusion of a happy relationship, even when they knew the man might be badly behaved.

"When asked about what kind of father the sexy bad boy would make if he were to have children with another woman, women were quick to point out the bad boy's shortcomings."

"But when it came to their own child, ovulating women believed that the charismatic and adventurous cad would be a great father to their kids."