Have there been any studies about the effect of a small penis on personality or accomplishment?

December 13, 2011 8:43 AM

Is there any scholarship out there about penis size and relative [success/happiness/confidence/etc]?

It is a tired cliche at this point that a guy driving a flashy car is inappropriately compensating for a small penis. And generally, there seems to be a shared cultural feeling that having a small penis should make a person feel embarrassed or inadequate (even if it is stated only in a joking way, a la the Seinfeld shrinkage episode or the Brett Favre text comments).

There are several questions on AskMe about small penis size as it relates to sex and relationships. My question is instead about the psychology of having a small penis and whether it has any relation to someone's personality. Is there anything out there that analyzes or surveys the population and seeks to make or not make a correlation between penis size and relative confidence, or success, or work ethic, or happiness, or anything?

Oh yeah, and I am totally asking for a friend.

posted by AgentRocket to society & culture (5 answers total)

At first I thought you waned a scholarship for having one.

This study might do it for you: http://www.vu.edu.au/media/media-releases/packed-lunch-why-men-hunger-for-more
posted by michaelh at 8:49 AM on December 13, 2011 [6 favorites]

I like the findings of "Studies on self-esteem of penile size in young Korean military men".
posted by roofus at 9:03 AM on December 13, 2011

A nation's average penis size has "an inverse U-sized relationship" to its GDP. In other words, the richer nations tend to have medium-sized penises on average. And I'm pretty sure GDP is positively correlated with happiness (I don't have those data on hand, but you could probably Google them pretty easily).
posted by John Cohen at 9:31 AM on December 13, 2011

Compared to their ideal body size, 5.8% of respondents were satisfied with their body size, 89.7% wanted to be bigger and 6.6% thought they were already bigger than the ideal.


Given that 90% of men think they are small I doubt the studies that indicate some sort of relationship to differences in well being are valid.
posted by srboisvert at 11:54 AM on December 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

There's the documentary My Penis and Everyone Else's, viewable in its entiretly at that link, which isn't necessarily completely scholarly but it is very frank about the penis' place in society, particularly some of the issues you cite in your original post.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:19 PM on December 13, 2011