A new study into penis sizes has got some data on which is the most attractive to women, and which intimidates men the most.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia showed 600 men and 200 women computer generated images of anatomically accurate naked men capturing a range of sizes and shapes.
The study had 343 generated images of the male body with penis sizes between five and 13cm, heights between 1.63 metres and 1.87 metres and body shapes ranging from pear (narrow at the top, wide at the middle) to V-shaped (wider at the shoulders and tapering down to a thin waist).
The images of longer penises were also wider with the longest being 1.2cm wider than the shortest one, and among the 343 images there were all possible combinations from seven versions of each of these three values.
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The women would look at the bodies and rate them in terms of attractiveness, while the men would rate other men's bodies in terms of attractiveness and try to judge the male body's fighting ability as well.
The preferred size
The study found that when it came to measuring attractiveness a bigger penis did make a difference to the women who participated in the survey.
Researchers found that the smallest penis was seen as the least attractive and the larger the love-length the more likely a body was to be rated attractive by the women who were shown the image.
This difference was more pronounced depending on whether the body was being viewed in person or the woman was just looking at an online image of them, as viewing smaller penises online saw the men's bodies rated even lower.
However, the upward trend in penis size and finding someone attractive did appear to hit a cap as the sixth (11.6cm) and seventh (13cm) size categories were rated pretty much the same in terms of attractiveness.
That upper size of 13cm un-erect did just edge to the top of the attractiveness ratings in person, but the study results indicate that there's a point of diminishing returns on the schlong size.
What women want
Women participating in the study were shown the images of the bodies and asked: “How sexually attractive is this figure to you?”
They had to rate each body on a scale of one to seven, with one being 'very unattractive' and seven being 'very attractive', and as you can see from the charts above the bodies with bigger penises were rated as more sexually attractive.
However, that's not all the bodies were measured on as height and body shape were also in the mix.
When judging attractiveness in person height really appeared to make a difference, though the sixth group were rated as a bit better looking that group seven with the tallest bodies and height didn't factor into things quite as much for the women looking at pictures of men's bodies online.
Meanwhile, body shape opinions also produced clear results showing that a man who was thin in the waist and broad in the shoulders was seen as much more attractive than the other way round.
So the results of the study indicate the ideal male body is decently tall with broad shoulders that taper down to a thinner waist and a larger penis, though getting onto the larger end of things started to result in diminishing returns.
A threatening shape for men
The men participating in the study were asked different questions to the women, as they had other metrics to rate the male bodies on.
Men were first asked: "How jealous would you feel if you saw this man talking to your partner?"
In this regard penis size was a major deciding factor, but then again so were height and body shape so the study indicates that the closer a body was to hitting the ideal dimensions on the three values being judged the more jealous a man was likely to feel of them talking to his partner.
The other thing men were asked was: "How threatened would you feel if this man wanted to pick a fight with you?"
Interestingly, when viewing the bodies in person, men felt more threatened by the two smallest sizes (5cm and 6.3cm) than the next two (7.6cm and 9cm) dingle dimensions, but once again the bigger sizes after that were rated as being more of a threat if a fight should break out.
Once again, the taller and more V-shaped the body they were looking at, the more men rated them as a physical threat.
Joe Harker