ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Paediatric penile length: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BJU international · 2026Pooled it
- Experimental evidence that penis size, height, and body shape influence assessment of male sexual attractiveness and fighting ability in humans.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Genital Dysmorphia-Psychopharmacology bulletin · 2025Article
- Human beauty illustrates the economic impact of heritable physical traits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.The world journal of men's health · 2023Article
- Pre- and postcopulatory competition affect testes mass and organization differently in two monophyletic mole-rat species,Journal of mammalogy · 2023Article
- The effect of penis size on partner sexual satisfaction: a literature review.International journal of impotence research · 2023Review
- Smaller prize, bigger size? Exploring the impact of money on men's self-reported markers of masculinity.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- History and future perspectives of male aesthetic genital surgery.International journal of impotence research · 2022Review
- Seven computations of the social brain.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
- Male genital lobe morphology affects the chance to copulate in Drosophila pachea.BMC ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- An Experiencer, An Animal or An Object? Erection Salience Decreases Men's Perceived Agency.Archives of sexual behavior · 2020Article
- Hominid sexual nature.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2020Article
- A multivariate analysis of women's mating strategies and sexual selection on men's facial morphology.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Motion and Gender-Typing Features Interact in the Perception of Human Bodies.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Article
- Sex and Male Circumcision: Women's Preferences Across Different Cultures and Countries: A Systematic Review.Sexual medicine · 2019Review
- Penis evolution across species: divergence and diversity.Nature reviews. Urology · 2019Review
- Private parts for private property: evolution of penis size with more valuable, easily stolen shells.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Growers versus showers: a meaningful (or useful) distinction?International journal of impotence research · 2018Article
- Grower or shower? Predictors of change in penile length from the flaccid to erect state.International journal of impotence research · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Compelling evidence from many animal taxa indicates that male genitalia are often under postcopulatory sexual selection for characteristics that increase a male's relative fertilization success. There could, however, also be direct precopulatory female mate choice based on male genital traits. Before clothing, the nonretractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates. This observation has generated suggestions that human penis size partly evolved because of female choice. Here we show, based upon female assessment of digitally projected life-size, computer-generated images, that penis size interacts with body shape and height to determine male sexual attractiveness. Positive linear selection was detected for penis size, but the marginal increase in attractiveness eventually declined with greater penis size (i.e., quadratic selection). Penis size had a stronger effect on attractiveness in taller men than in shorter men. There was a similar increase in the positive effect of penis size on attractiveness with a more masculine body shape (i.e., greater shoulder-to-hip ratio). Surprisingly, larger penis size and greater height had almost equivalent positive effects on male attractiveness. Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans. More broadly, our results show that precopulatory sexual selection can play a role in the evolution of genital traits.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.