Anyone who has sex with a guy has probably, at one point or another, relayed on to one of their friends the guy’s penis size. Some overestimate, some underestimate, and I’m sure a few are accurate in their description, but how many of us can actually look at something and then relate it’s size inches precisely? My guess is not many.

Let’s look at a dollar bill as an example. When asked how many inches long is a dollar bill, I have heard answers anywhere between four and seven inches. The real answer is 6.14 inches, making only one out of the ten people asked correct. I asked those same ten people about the width of a dollar bill, and again, only one out of ten were correct. In case anyone is curious, I got both of the questions wrong myself as well.

So, if everyday people cannot identify the length of a dollar bill, an everyday object that we see fairly often, then how can we expect those same people to be able to accurately guess on the size of a penis, which I’m almost certain they look at less than dollar bills? We can’t.

This can be an issue for guys in terms of lowering self-confidence and heightening arrogance. Things of this nature rarely stay between two or three people, and the smaller or larger a penis supposedly is, the more likely the news is to make its way around social circles. Men who hear they have a reputation about their penis size may have psychological reactions. According to a study published by the International Journal of Impotence Research in 2013, men with low sexual confidence may even be at a higher risk of erectile dysfunction.

People looking for sexual relations with men may have other concerns. If one can’t rely on word of mouth to predict the size of a new partner, what else could be an indicator? Some answers include shoe size, height, thumb length, race and depth of voice. However, all of these answers are merely myths, with no studies or research done to back any of them up.

There may be one way to predict things before getting undressed though. A study done in Korea at Gacheon University Gill Hospital has found a correlation between index finger length and penis length. The study was conducted on 144 men, and the final verdict was that men with longer index fingers tend to have shorter penises. The reasoning for this is believed to be that the length of index fingers is an indicator of prenatal androgen and testosterone.

Despite the Gacheon University Gill Hospital study that holds some validity, the message to take home here is that unless you are looking at the penis in real-time, you have no real way of knowing the size of it. You can ask around, can look at the dude’s feet and you can even examine his index finger, but the truth is found within the moment, not with myths and inches.

The interesting thing here, in my opinion, is the extent to which people are concerned about penis length. Is size really such a determining factor in constituting good sexual experiences? While it is proven to effect sexual experiences, a study conducted by the University of Texas Pan-American revealed that width has a larger impact than length. Knowing this information, maybe we, as a society, should drop the length fixation, not in favor of a width fixation, but to simply put an end to seeking and spreading false information that is, logically, useless to begin with.