A sample of 105 heterosexual Australian women each viewed life-sized projections of 53 of the images and rated their sexual attractiveness. Subsequent studies of women’s preferences, based on questionnaires or line drawings, have reported conflicting results.įor the latest study, researchers developed computer-generated images of males that varied independently in three factors: height, shoulder-to-hip ratio and penis length. The findings add to a debate that began in 1966 when sexuality researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson declared penis size to be unimportant to most females. Now, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that women consider penis size and height equally when judging men’s attractiveness, but both exhibit diminishing returns with greater size and are less important than a masculine body type. Biologists have puzzled, therefore, over what factors might have caused the human penis to become so large. They diversify earlier than other physical traits, with a wide variation in size and shape across the animal kingdom that can reveal a species’ evolutionary pressures.
The finding suggests that women’s preferences could have fuelled the evolution of the human male penis, which is longer and thicker than that of any other primate. Researchers report today that penis size does matter to women - though within limits.
