Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Volumn 110, Issue 17, 2013, Pages 6925-6930

  Mautz, Brian S ^a,d   Wong, Bob B M ^b   Peters, Richard A ^c   Jennions, Michael D ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^b MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^c LA TROBE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^d UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Genital evolution; Multiple cues; Multivariate attractiveness

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; BODY BUILD; BODY HEIGHT; BODY MASS; CLOTHING; EVOLUTION; FEMALE; HORMONAL CONTRACEPTION; HUMAN; LATENT PERIOD; MALE GENITAL TRACT PARAMETERS; MASCULINITY; MATE CHOICE; MENSTRUAL CYCLE; ORGAN SIZE; PENIS SIZE; PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS; PRIORITY JOURNAL; QUESTIONNAIRE; REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS; RESPONSE TIME; SEXUAL SELECTION; SEXUALITY;

BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION; BODY SIZE; CHOICE BEHAVIOR; FEMALE; GENETIC FITNESS; HUMANS; MALE; ORGAN SIZE; PENIS; SELECTION, GENETIC; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR;

ANIMALIA;

EID: 84876886257     PISSN: 00278424     EISSN: 10916490     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1219361110     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Arnqvist G (1998) Comparative evidence for the evolution of genitalia by sexual selection. Nature 393(6687):784-786.
2. Simmons LW (2001) Sperm Competition and Its Evolutionary Consequences in the Insects (Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, NJ).
3. Eberhard WG (1996) Female Control: Sexual Selection by Cryptic Female Choice (Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, NJ).
4. Bertin A, Fairbairn DJ (2005) One tool, many uses: Precopulatory sexual selection on genital morphology in Aquarius remigis. J Evol Biol 18(4):949-961.
5. Grieshop K, Polak M (2012) The precopulatory function of male genital spines in Drosophila ananassae[Doleschall] (Diptera: Drosophilidae) revealed by laser surgery. Evolution 66(8):2637-2645.
6. Langerhans RB, Layman CA, DeWitt TJ (2005) Male genital size reflects a tradeoff between attracting mates and avoiding predators in two live-bearing fish species. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102(21):7618-7623.
7. Kahn AT, Mautz B, Jennions MD (2010) Females prefer to associate with males with longer intromittent organs in mosquitofish. Biol Lett 6(1):55-58.
8. Gasparini C, Pilastro A, Evans JP (2011) Male genital morphology and its influence on female mating preferences and paternity success in guppies. PLoS ONE 6(7): e22329.
9. Candolin U (2003) The use of multiple cues in mate choice. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 78(4):575-595.
10. Donohoe ML, von Hippel W, Brooks RC (2009) Beyond waist-hip ratio: Experimental multivariate evidence that average women's torsos are most attractive. Behav Ecol 20(4):716-721.
11. Brooks R, Shelly JP, Fan J, Zhai L, Chau DKP (2010) Much more than a ratio: Multi-variate selection on female bodies. J Evol Biol 23(10):2238-2248.
12. Saxton TK, Burriss RP, Murray AK, Rowland HM, Roberts SC (2009) Face, body and speech cues independently predict judgments of attractiveness. J Evol Psychol (Bp) 7(1):23-35.
13. Lande R, Arnold SJ (1983) The measurement of selection on correlated characters. Evolution 37(6):1210-1226.
14. Roberts B, Harris MG, Yates TA (2005) The roles of inducer size and distance in the Ebbinghaus illusion (Titchener circles). Perception 34(7):847-856.
15. Silventoinen K, Kaprio J, Lahelma E, Viken RJ, Rose RJ (2003) Assortative mating by body height and BMI: Finnish twins and their spouses. Am J Hum Biol 15(5):620-627.
16. Burriss RP, Roberts SC, Welling LLM, Puts DA, Little AC (2011) Heterosexual romantic couples mate assortatively for facial symmetry, but not masculinity. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 37(5):601-613.
17. Pawłowski B (2003) Variable preferences for sexual dimorphism in height as a strategy for increasing the pool of potential partners in humans. Proc Roy Soc Lond B 270(1516): 709-712.
18. Courtiol A, Picq S, Godelle B, Raymond M, Ferdy J-B (2010) From preferred to actual mate characteristics: The case of human body shape. PLoS ONE 5(9):e13010.
19. Diamond JM (1997) Why is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (Basic Books, New York, NY).
20. Miller GF (2001) The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (Anchor Books, New York, NY).
21. Lehman P (1993) Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body (Temple Univ Press, Philadelphia, PA).
22. Lever J, Frederick DA, Peplau LA (2006) Does size matter? Men's and women's views on penis size across the lifespan. Psychol Men Masc 7:129-143.
23. Brody S, Weiss P (2010) Vaginal orgasm is associated with vaginal (not clitoral) sex education, focusing mental attention on vaginal sensations, intercourse duration, and a preference for a longer penis. J Sex Med 7(8):2774-2781.
24. Eisenman R (2001) Penis size: Survey of female perceptions of sexual satisfaction. BMC Womens Health 1(1):1.
25. Stulhofer A (2006) How (un)important is penis size for women with heterosexual experience? Arch Sex Behav 35(1):5-6.
26. Francken AB, van de Wiel HB, van Driel MF, Weijmar Schultz WC (2002) What importance do women attribute to the size of the penis? Eur Urol 42(5):426-431.
27. Randall DM, Fernandes MF (1991) The social desirability response bias in ethics research. J Bus Ethics 10(11):805-817.
28. Fisher RJ (1993) Social desirability bias and the validity of indirect questioning. J Consum Res 20(2):303.
29. Tourangeau R, Yan T (2007) Sensitive questions in surveys. Psychol Bull 133(5):859-883.
30. Dixson BJ, Dixson AF, Morgan B, Anderson MJ (2007) Human physique and sexual attractiveness: Sexual preferences of men and women in Bakossiland, Cameroon. Arch Sex Behav 36(3):369-375.
31. Dixson BJ, Dixson AF, Li B, Anderson MJ (2007) Studies of human physique and sexual attractiveness: Sexual preferences of men and women in China. Am J Hum Biol 19(1): 88-95.
32. Dixson BJ, Dixson AF, Bishop PJ, Parish A (2010) Human physique and sexual attractiveness in men and women: A New Zealand-U.S. comparative study. Arch Sex Behav 39(3):798-806.
33. Mueller U, Mazur A (2001) Evidence of unconstrained directional selection for male tallness. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 50(4):302-311.
34. Nettle D (2002) Height and reproductive success in a cohort of British men. Hum Nat 13(4):473-491.
35. Pawlowski B, Dunbar RI, Lipowicz A (2000) Tall men have more reproductive success. Nature 403(6766):156.
36. Currie TE, Little AC (2009) The relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractiveness. Evol Hum Behav 30(6):409-416.
37. Courtiol A, Raymond M, Godelle B, Ferdy J-B (2010) Mate choice and human stature: Homogamy as a unified framework for understanding mating preferences. Evolution 64(8):2189-2203.
38. Brooks R, et al. (2005) Experimental evidence for multivariate stabilizing sexual selection. Evolution 59(4):871-880.
39. Ponchietti R, et al. (2001) Penile length and circumference: A study on 3, 300 young Italian males. Eur Urol 39(2):183-186.
40. Imhoff R, et al. (2010) Viewing time effects revisited: Prolonged response latencies for sexually attractive targets under restricted task conditions. Arch Sex Behav 39(6): 1275-1288.
41. Samuels CA, Ewy R (1985) Aesthetic perception of faces during infancy. Br J Dev Psychol 3(3):221-228.
42. van Duuren M, Kendell-Scott L, Stark N (2003) Early aesthetic choices: Infant preferences for attractive premature infant faces. Int J Behav Dev 27(3):212-219.
43. Sear R, Marlowe FW (2009) How universal are human mate choices? Size does not matter when Hadza foragers are choosing a mate. Biol Lett 5(5):606-609.
44. Sear R (2010) Height and reproductive success. Homo Novus-A Human Without Illusions, eds Frey UJ, Störmer C, Willführ KP (Springer, Heidelberg), pp 127-143.
45. Stulp G, Pollet TV, Verhulst S, Buunk AP (2012) A curvilinear effect of height on reproductive success in human males. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66(3):375-384.
46. Maisey DS, Vale EL, Cornelissen PL, Tovée MJ (1999) Characteristics of male attractiveness for women. Lancet 353(9163):1500.
47. Hughes SM, Gallup GG (2003) Sex differences in morphological predictors of sexual behavior. Evol Hum Behav 24(3):173-178.
48. Swami V, Tovée MJ (2005) Male physical attractiveness in Britain and Malaysia: A cross-cultural study. Body Image 2(4):383-393.
49. Ford ES, Mokdad AH, Giles WH (2003) Trends in waist circumference among U.S. adults. Obes Res 11(10):1223-1231.
50. Masters WH, Johnson VE (1966) Human Sexual Response (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA).
51. Costa RM, Miller GF, Brody S (2012) Women who prefer longer penises are more likely to have vaginal orgasms (but not clitoral orgasms): Implications for an evolutionary theory of vaginal orgasm. J Sex Med 9(12):3079-3088.
52. Brody S, Weiss P (2011) Simultaneous penile-vaginal intercourse orgasm is associated with satisfaction (sexual, life, partnership, and mental health). J Sex Med 8(3): 734-741.
53. Blows MW, Brooks R (2003) Measuring nonlinear selection. Am Nat 162(6):815-820.
54. Stinchcombe JR, Agrawal AF, Hohenlohe PA, Arnold SJ, Blows MW (2008) Estimating nonlinear selection gradients using quadratic regression coefficients: Double or nothing? Evolution 62(9):2435-2440.
55. Reynolds RJ, Childers DK, Pajewski NM (2010) The distribution and hypothesis testing of eigenvalues from the canonical analysis of the gamma matrix of quadratic and correlational selection gradients. Evolution 64(4):1076-1085.
56. R Core Development Team (2008) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna).