Women Find Men With Bigger Penises More Attractive, Study Shows

There might be a lot of men out there who will not react well to the results of a study released Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: penis size and attractiveness are related.

"Penis size does affect attractiveness," the study's lead author Brian Mautz, a University of Ottawa post-doctoral researcher of evolution and sexual selection, said in an interview with NBCNews.com.

The study asked 105 heterosexual women in Australia to rate a series of 53 computer-generated images of generic male figures with varying heights, body shapes and flaccid penis lengths.

The women were not told they were participating in a study about penis size. They were asked to rate the images according to sexual attractiveness; their answers were collected anonymously.

Researchers found that women rated tall men with long penises the most attractive, according to news site The Australian.

The study contradicts claims that penis size in unimportant to most females and also hints at why humans have relatively large genitalia when compared to other primates:

"Our results show that female mate choice could have played a role in the evolution of the relatively large human male penis," the authors wrote, according to The Australian.

"Before clothing, the non-retractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates."

Of the women surveyed, more than 70 percent were of European origin, 20 percent were Asian and the other 10 percent were from elsewhere. The women's average age was 26.