Study discovers that men can't be trusted to measure their own penises

Everyone knows that, given the chance, a lot of men would lie about the size of their penis to make it seems as though it’s larger than it actually is.

Now, that statement has been scientifically proven as research looked into just how much men will lie about their penis size.

The research study was conducted by the University of Agder in Norway and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and asked Danish men to self-report the size of their penis, their height and their level of athleticism in comparison to the average population.

As part of the study, participants were separated into two groups according to how much they were paid to participate in the experiment – groups were paid either $5 or $22, approximately.

Extreme outliers were excluded, for example, one person reported their erect penis as being 9,000 cm which is around 50 times larger than the penis size of an adult elephant.

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Among the remaining participants, researchers found that on the whole, the self-reported measurements were above the population mean and midpoint, excluding their self-reported weight measurement.

The study authors explained: “However, the most extreme deviance from the Danish mean … was found for erect penis size, in which participants’ self-reported size (M = 18.02 cm, SD = 3.72) was 21.1% larger than the stated Danish mean of 14.88 cm.”

Researchers also found that while both groups exaggerated their measurements “dramatically”, the group that was better paid exaggerated less.

The results suggest that by paying participants better, studies could get more accurate results, however, the group did also over-exaggerate their measurements.

The study read: “These results indicate that, when interested in bodily variables important to men’s self-view and identity, such variables should not be done through self-report. Especially not if they concern private bodily measures linked to masculinity (i.e., penis size).”

It continued: “Our results suggest that private data related to bodily cues of masculinity can only be reliably collected in the lab," they added, "where conditions can be fully controlled.”

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