http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...ers-study-says
Of course, the study used a limited sample of pretty specific women. And, not to worry, it's unlikely to have any real-world applications. Attraction takes into account myriad characteristics, and is unlikely to be well mirrored in a study with weird, white CGI male figures.
To conduct the study, the biologists created 343 male figures with all possible combinations of height, shoulder-to-hip ratio and penis size within a natural range. (I must note that the figures are kind of creepy-looking, although I understand they were created to keep other traits, such as skin color and facial attractiveness, constant.) The biologists then asked women who volunteered for their study to view a random sampling of 53 of the figures and to rate the figures' attractiveness. Statistical analyses of the women's answers yielded such gems as:
- Shoulder-to-hip ratio mattered the most, while both penis size and height mattered about the same amount, and less than shoulder-to-hip ratio.
- Penis size had a greater effect on attractiveness rating in taller men than in shorter men.
- Penis size also had a greater effect on attractiveness rating in men with higher shoulder-to-hip ratios than in men with smaller shoulders compared to their hips.
- There were diminishing returns for everything. That is, how much more attractiveness the figures gained for added height, penis size and shoulder-to-hip ratio decreased as those traits increased. So the attractiveness difference between at 6'1" man and a 6'2" man is less than the difference between a 5'1" man and a 5'2" man. For penis size, the dropoff in attractiveness gains started at about 7.6 centimeters, or three inches (remember, that's flaccid length).
- Women's ages did not affect their attractiveness ratings, but women's heights did. Taller women made height more important in their ratings than shorter women did.
- Women took longer to rate figures they found more attractive. Previous studies have found that people generally spend longer gazing at things they find attractive.
