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| Woman want big penises... |
A study released today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS) offers an explanation: Women are attracted to penises, and the
bigger the better.
“Penis size does affect attractiveness,” lead author
Brian Mautz, a University of Ottawa post-doctoral researcher said in an
NBCNews.com interview.
Past research has seemed to indicate that women, as
a group, are drawn to larger male members. But those results have been disputed
as sexist, or scientifically flawed, or both.
So Mautz and his team, working at the Australian
National University, designed an experiment in hopes of settling the
controversy. They created 49 unique, computer-generated, nude, life-sized male
figures. Each figure varied in three traits: height, shoulder-hip ratio and
flaccid penis size.
The researchers then displayed all the figures to
105 Australian women with an average age of 26. The women, who were not told
which traits varied, were asked to rate the attractiveness of the figures as
sexual partners on a scale of 1-7. The women were alone in the room and their responses
were anonymous.
As past studies have shown, women prefer tall men
with broad shoulders and narrow hips, like an Olympic swimmer. But when Mautz
controlled for those variables, it turned out that penis size (overall length
and girth) was about as important as stature.
“As you increase penis size, the amount of
attractiveness scores gets bigger” in a linear fashion, he explained, until 7.6
centimeters, or 3 inches. After three inches, attractiveness still increased,
but in smaller increments.
Not only were the ratings higher, but the women also
spent more time gazing at the generously endowed figures, a sign they preferred
looking at them as opposed to figures with smaller penises.
Women with a greater body mass index held stronger
preferences for big penises. And size was most critical in tall men, perhaps,
Mautz speculated, because “a taller guy must have a disproportionately larger
penis to sort of make it clear” he’s endowed.
Some have argued that penis size fretting is driven
by a body-obsessed culture and porn saturation. But according to Stuart Brody,
a researcher at the University of the West of Scotland who’s conducted studies
on orgasm, penis size and relationship satisfaction, “some erotica might
reflect fads, but there is a potent evolutionary motivation” at work, too.
That’s what interested Mautz, who studies
mate-choice, or why we choose one individual over another. Women make mate
choices based partly on evolutionarily constructed fitness preferences and may
be using penis size as a clue, Brody said. “The results of the PNAS study (and
our own penis size studies) are consistent with a mate-choice perspective.”
But a clue to what? Women may be looking for
orgasms, which, in turn, Mautz suggested, may serve a pair-bonding function. In
the recent book, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of
Attraction (which I co-authored), Emory University
neuroscientist Larry Young argues that the big human penis evolved into a
tool meant to stimulate both the vagina and cervix as a way trigger the release
of oxytocin in a
woman’s brain, activating bonding circuits. Such bonds provide a survival
advantage to offspring.
Or as Mautz puts it in his paper, “Our results
support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution
of larger penises in humans.”
Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is
co-author, with Larry Young,
of
"The Chemistry Between Us:
Love, Sex and
the Science of Attraction,"
© 2013 NBCNews.com Reprints
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