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Topics: News, World News, Health
Kit Roberts
A new study has examined the effect that having a large penis has on someone's life.
It's something which many men might feel insecure about, a symbol of your manhood and virility, and now academics have examined the impact of a large penis.
While having a large penis now has more positive social connotations attached to it, for example, the idea of 'big d*ck energy' meaning someone who exudes a certain amount of confidence or self-assurance, it wasn't always so.
For example, the Ancient Greeks actually viewed a large member in a negative light, believing that an overly large penis meant you placed less emphasis on rational thinking, and caused someone to behave animalistically.
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Lots of Greek statues, which reflect an ideal of male beauty, often depict penises on the smaller side.
So, what is the impact of having a large penis in a society which views that as a positive, masculine thing?
The study from the University of Western Australia suggested that people with a large undercarriage may be 'more physically threatening and sexually competitive'.
So, how did the study work?
Dr Upama Aich led a team of experts who showed computer-generated images of male figures with a variety of different penis sizes, as well as height and body shape, to 600 men and 200 women.
They then asked them to rate the 343 figures, aiming to study how 'these traits influence perceived attractiveness and fighting ability'.
Women were asked to include sexual attractiveness, and they asked men to explain how intimidating they found the figures both in a sexual sense or in a fight.
The study found that men and women 'favoured taller men with a more V-shaped body and a larger penis'.
It said: "In both surveys, male participants rated rivals with a larger penis as more sexually competitive and physically threatening.
"To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence that males assess rivals’ fighting ability and attractiveness to females based partly on a rival’s penis size.
"Our findings suggest that female choice and male-male competition have jointly favoured larger penis size, greater height, and more V-shaped bodies in men."
So there you go - men find larger penises intimidating.
This doesn't address how much of this is to do with evolutionary biology, and how much more to do with sociology and how a society might view penis sizes.
There's also the factor that while many might like a larger endowment, if it's so large that it's painful or uncomfortable for a sexual partner, then that's not great.