Men are often told it’s not how big their sexual organ is that’s important, but where they put it.
But unfortunately for guys with a small penis, a new study suggests that size really does matter.
Researchers at King’s College London recruited willing couples to find out more about how length affects sexual pleasure for the lady.
The experts artificially reduced the depth of penetration by providing different sized silicone rings to put around the base of each man’s erect penis during intercourse.
According to the results, just an extra inch made all the difference in terms of sexual pleasure for the women.
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This might be due to the greater ability of a longer penis to stimulate the entire length of the vagina and the cervix for the female.
Experiments involving silicone rings on men’s erect penises showed the length really does improve sexual pleasure for the woman during intercourse (stock image)
Researchers wanted to explore whether artificially reducing the depth of penetration during intercourse matters to women.
They said men can worry or be ashamed about the length or girth of their penis, and that many also wish it was longer.
‘We started with the premise that depth of penetration would not matter to most women,’ the experts say in their paper, published in BJU International.
Reducing the depth of penetration by an inch led to a statistically meaningful drop in the amount of pleasure experienced.
‘The longer the erect penis, the less likely the rings had an impact on sexual pleasure,’ they write.
Lead study author Professor David Veale has stressed the results ‘should not be misinterpreted as meaning that increasing penile length in a normal man will increase sexual pleasure in women’.
‘That would be a completely different study,’ he said.
Rather, decreasing the length of the penis available for vaginal penetration during sex decreases sexual pleasure in women – a subtle difference.
To learn whether size does matter, they recruited 12 sexually active heterosexual couples with no problems in the bedroom.
There were four rings in total – 0.2-inch, one inch, 1.5-inch and two-inch – that the guy had to separately place at the base of his penis during sex to reduce the depth of penetration.
Couples were told to have sex either three, four or five times for each ring the guy was wearing on his penis.
Female partners, who didn’t know which ring was being used throughout any of the sessions, had to rate, from one to 100, her levels of sexual pleasure and ’emotional connection to the male partner’.
On average, reducing the depth of penetration led to a ‘statistically significant’ 18 per reduction of overall sexual pleasure with each average 15 per cent reduction in length of the penis, the researchers found.
So in other words, the longer the erect penis, the less likely the rings were to have an impact on sexual pleasure.
Pictured, penile rings used for the study. Top picture shows a vertical view of the penile rings. The hole in the middle allows the erect penis to fit through. The bottom picture is a horizontal view of the penile rings. Rings are shown largest to smallest (left to right, D to A). The rings restrict penetration by 2 inch for D, 1.5 inch for C, 1 inch for B and 0.2 inch for A
‘There was a range of individual responses, however, with a minority of women reporting that reducing the depth of penetration was more pleasurable on some occasions, the study authors say in their paper.
According to the authors, the average (mean) penis length when erect is 5.1 inches (13.1cm), with an average girth of 4.59 inches (11.66 cm).
But for the sample size in this study, the average (median) self-reported erect penis length of the male partners was 6.6 inches (17cm).
‘Participants did measure themselves – but we don’t know if they were but bigger than normal or actually over-egging it,’ Professor Veale told MailOnline.
Experts concluded that further replication of the study to confirm its results will need a more diverse range of penile length.
‘We did not ask about the effect on sexual pleasure in the men in reducing their depth of penetration and how this altered their self-confidence and behaviour, and this may be important in replication of the study,’ they said.