Why We Kiss

Couple Kissing

Research is being conducted into one of the most basic of human interactions, the kiss, and at the forefront of this research is Susan Hughes, an assistant professor of psychology at Albright College in Pennsylvania. Currently, there are few studies that examine the act of kissing in detail, and the aim of this research is to determine what prompts humans to engage in this form of human contact.

Those involved in the study conducted a series of 3 interviews with 1041 students at the University at Albany, New York and proposed three hypothesis:

1. People use kissing as a form of mate assessment -- Hughes noted that information is passed "from their breath, the taste of their saliva, things like that..."
2. People use kissing as a form of bonding -- Hughes suspects kissing "raises levels of a hormone called oxytocin, which is related to interpersonal bonding."
3. Men use kissing to induce sexual arousal in mates, thereby increasing the likelihood of engaging in sexual intercourse -- Hughes states "Men might use this more to seduce their partners more than women do..."

Hughes and her colleagues found support for each hypothesis, though "provocative differences" were found between men and women. Those findings are reported in the October 2007 edition of Evolutionary Psychology. Women were found to place greater emphasis on the taste and smell of their mate -- "That clues us in that females may be using it more to make mate assessments than men...", says Hughes. The study also found that women refuse sex 85% of the time when not engaging in kissing prior to intercourse. This contrasts sharply with men, as more than half of all males said they would have sex without kissing first. Hughes found that "Women are definitely using kissing to make an assessment about the male. If he's a bad kisser, then she's not going to want to have sex with him. She's getting a lot of information from that kiss..."

Men, on the other hand, expect kissing to lead to sex roughly 50% of the time, compared with women, who expect intercourse one third of the time. "That fits with other research", says Beverly Palmer of California State University, showing men and women often interpret nonverbal cues differently. "When the woman is first kissing the man, she's not necessarily sending the signal, `Let's go to the next stage' – but the man is reading it that way," Palmer says.

"Males ... like the very moist, wet open-mouth kisses", Hughes says. "Perhaps males need more saliva to make subtle mate assessments. He may be subconsciously detecting whether she's fertile or not.''

Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University anthropologist who studies love, was intrigued that men also were more likely than women to think a kiss could end a fight. "Maybe it's because they know women find kissing more intimate, so they are doing something not for themselves but to win women over."

Women in Hughes's study were more likely to say kissing was important throughout sex, and the relationship. "That supports the idea that females are using kissing to create a bond", she says.

As a male who would like to generally consider himself atypical when compared to the rest of the gender, I was surprised to find that I tended to associate and relate to the vast majority of all men. Oh well. I guess with these rugged good looks comes a certain amount of piggishness. I just wonder if women find that worth dealing with, LOL.

Anyway, I'm curious if after reading the results of this study will I perhaps go the extra mile to be a little more sensitive and understanding of what is typical and/or appropriate behavior when interacting with the opposite sex? Probably not, but a boy, and his girl, can dream, can't they?