A medical study has confirmed every unendowed man’s worst nightmare: women really do think bigger is better when it comes down to what’s in your pants.
Well, that's if we're talking about vaginal orgasms achieved through penetrative sex, and not clitoral orgasms, which "the experts" like to argue are two totally different things, natch.
The findings, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, saw 323 women at a Scottish university asked to recall their sexual activity within the last month.
They were asked about penile-vaginal intercourse, vaginal orgasm and clitoral orgasm and whether penis length influenced their ability to orgasm.
Of these, 160 women had experienced vaginal-only orgasms and had had enough sexual partners to compare size experiences.
33.8 per cent of that figure claimed to prefer bigger-than-average penises, 60 per cent said size did not matter to them, and 6.3 per cent said they preferred shorter appendages.
Overall the women who reported the highest number of vaginal orgasms during the previous 30 days tended to say they preferred longer penises, the findings revealed.
Size matters: Or at least she seems to think so (posed by model)
Researchers found penis size was however not related to the frequency of clitoral orgasm.
"Male anxiety about penis size may not reflect internalised, culturally arbitrary masculine stereotypes, but an accurate appreciation that size matters to many women — just as men feel legitimate anxiety when they enter the mating market about their intelligence, personality traits, sense of humor, social status, height, wealth, and other traits known to be favored by women across cultures," study researcher Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of the West of Scotland, told LiveScience.
Of the prevalence of vaginal orgasms among women who preferred longer penises, he added: "This might be due at least in part to greater ability of a longer penis to stimulate the entire length of the vagina and the cervix."
But other researchers appear to have poured scorn on the findings.
"There's such variability in preference," said Barry Komisaruk, who researches female sexual response at Rutgers University.
Women who orgasm through vaginal stimulation may indeed prefer longer penises, Komisaruk told LiveScience, but not everyone prefers to orgasm that way.
"There are so many different factors," said Komisaruk, who was not involved in Brody's study. "Once it gets to the kind of specifics that they're talking about, I get wary."
Catchily entitled Women Who Prefer Longer Penises Are More Likely To Have Vaginal Orgasms (But Not Clitoral Orgasms): Implications For An Evolutionary Theory Of Vaginal Orgasms, it concludes: “Women who prefer deeper penile-vaginal stimulation are more likely to have vaginal orgasm, consistent with vaginal orgasm evolving as part of a female mate choice system favouring somewhat larger than average penises.”
The study comes on the back of research which suggests British men typically have bigger penises than their French counterparts but are less well endowed than Germans.
The average penis size for a British man is apparently 5.5in when erect - larger than the French at 5.3in, Australians (5.2in), Americans (5.1in) and Irish (5in).
Men from Africa's Republic of Congo are best equipped with an average penis length of 7.1in, while the average manhood in North and South Korea measures in at a mere 3.8in, the research claims.
British men typically have bigger penises than their French counterparts
However doubts about the study by Dr Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, have been raised after some of the data was taken from websites.
The research published in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences claims Ecuadorian men are among those with the largest penises, with an average length of 7in. They are followed by Ghanaians at 6.8in and Colombians at 6.7in.
British men rank 78th out of 113 nationalities in the table of average penis lengths, according to the study.
In Europe, Icelanders are the best endowed at 6.5in and the Irish are the second smallest at 5.03in - behind Romanians at 5.01in.
British men come in just under the Germans, who are in line with the European average of 5.7in.
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Africans have the biggest penises with an average of 6.3in, while north-east Asians the smallest at 4.2in, the study claims.
Research author Mr Lynn said that the findings confirm previous theories of "race differences in penis length".
He concludes: "For most of these populations, penis lengths are predictable and confirmed."
But critics argue that Mr Lynn's research is flawed because he has gathered data on penis length from websites.
Jelte Wicherts, professor of methodology at Tilburg University, Holland, told The Telegraph: "This is a brave paper in a controversial area but the data has no methodology."
Average penis size by country (in inches):
- Republic of Congo, 7.1
- Ecuador, 7
- Ghana, 6.8
- Colombia 6.7
- Iceland 6.5
- Italy 6.2
- South Africa 6
- Sweden 5.9
- Greece 5.8
- Germany 5.7
- New Zealand 5.5
- UK 5.5
- Canada 5.5
- Spain 5.5
- France 5.3
- Australia 5.2
- Russia 5.2
- USA 5.1
- Ireland 5
- Romania 5
- China 4.3
- India 4
- Thailand 4
- South Korea 3.8
- North Korea 3.8