Facts & Myths about the Human Penis (science article)

note: Whoa!!! Why are you clicking on this article? Don’t you already know the truth of your own penis (if you are a male)? Are you going to give your penis power away to some writer? If you are a woman,please feel free to add your answers to the questions asked other women, and please post them here, to stimulate live discussion.
🙂

FACTS AND MYTHS ABOUT THE HUMAN PENIS
By Gad Saad, Ph.D.
Psychology Today
December, 2009

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/200912/facts-and-myths
-about-the-human-penis

One of the greatest physical insecurities that men experience is whether
their phallus measures up. In a 2006 Internet study using a very large
sample of heterosexual participants (52,031), Lever, Frederick, and Peplau
(2006) found that whereas the great majority of women (85%) were content
with their partners’ penis size, a much smaller percentage of men were
satisfied with the size of their own penises (55%). Of note, only 0.2% of
men wished to have a smaller penis!

Given men’s concern about the size of their penises, I tackle three
penile-related issues in today’s post: (1) Are visible traits such as a
man’s shoe size correlated to his penis size? (2) How important is penis
size to women; and (3) Does a penis’ girth or length contribute more to a
woman’s sexual pleasure?

Penis Size and Shoe Size

Shah and Christopher (2002), two urologists in London (England), measured
the stretched penises of 104 men who did not otherwise have any penile
abnormalities. The participants’ shoe sizes were also recorded. A linear
regression was performed between the two variables, which yielded an
r-squared value of 0.012 (p = 0.28), which implies that there is no
statistically significant correlation between the two variables. This must
be a relief to those men who wear a small shoe size!

Do Women Care About Penis Size?

In a 2002 study published in European Urology, Francken, van de Wiel, van
Driel, and Schultz asked women the importance that they attributed to penile
size using two metrics: length and girth. Importance was captured via a
four-item scale (totally unimportant, unimportant, important, and very
important). One hundred and seventy surveys were returned. In general, most
women felt that penile size was unimportant to them. Specifically, 20% and
1% of the women thought that penile length was important and very important
respectively. The corresponding percentages for penile thickness were 31%
(important) and 2% (very important) respectively. It would appear that to
the extent that size matters, girth is more important than length. Of note,
the authors seem to have identified the well-known “size queen” effect, as
those women who cared about one metric seemed to also care about the other
(correlation = 0.71).

Length versus Girth and Female Sexual Pleasure

We’ve all heard the colloquialism that it is not the size of the boat that
matters but rather the motion of the ocean. This perhaps originated from the
classic works of Masters and Johnson, these having concluded that there were
no physiological reasons to expect that a man’s penis size would affect a
woman’s sexual pleasure. In 2001, Russell Eisenman published a paper in BMC
Women’s Health wherein 50 women were asked whether girth or length
contributed more to their sexual pleasure. Ninety-percent of the surveyed
women responded that the thickness of a penis was a more important elicitor
of pleasure. None of the women responded that they could not tell the
difference between the two metrics. This suggests that to the extent that a
man’s penis size is important to a woman’s sexual pleasure, it all resides
in the thickness.