When I first came across this article, I thought it would go along perfectly with our reproduction topic we have been discussing all semester.
This study was done to find out if the size of a male's sex organ truly does impact mate selection or attractiveness (if women were more attracted to male's with a larger penis). It also discusses whether or not a male's height and body shape mattered as well! The page has a YouTube video explaining the study for those who would rather watch than read!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bigger-not-always-better-penis-size
I really found this interesting. I didn't know that average was 9cm. I do think, like they said, more research does need to be done on reproductive success though. And what about the MHC complexes? They needed to take more things into consideration when doing this experiment.
ReplyDeleteI agree more certainly could have been done with this study, however I'm not sure their objective set out to look at the physiology of it. I believe they wanted to focus simply on whether or not the the anatomy mattered in sexual attractiveness.
ReplyDeleteOther researchers say that the findings are an important first step but fall short of showing a role for sexual selection in the evolution of human penis size, a point that Mautz concedes. “It's hard to extrapolate much from the data,” he says. ”More work needs to be done to connect the dots.”
Oh wow. I thought that it was neat how the three factors of height, body shape, and size all correlated to attractiveness for women. I was really shocked that the data revealed height and size to be so close in range rather than height and body shape. According to the video, size is more important for taller men rather than shorter men. I also thought it was interesting that the data showed that women were more attractive to a size that was larger than 13cm when 95% fall in the 9cm range.
ReplyDeleteBased on their finding, I am inclined to think that there may be some physical proportions that are predominately preferred by both women and men. Little and Jones (2003) conducted a study on the role of symmetry and physical preferences. They found that people are more attracted to other people with symmetrical face features. I wonder if ladies do have a common, engrained range of visual, symmetrical preferences for the male physique. I do believe that a generalized preference may be considered, but there are too many variables to accurately determine a standardized range of preferences and their definitive role in repreductive selection.
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