Sheril Kirshenbaum, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, gives an engaging overview of the possible evolutionary basis for two people mashing their mouths together -- a practice that is actually pretty odd, once you think about it. There's the way sexy red lipstick plays on our hunter-gatherer past, how swapping spit can help us develop immunity against disease and why it might have first developed as a way to literally sniff out genetically appropriate sexual partners.Hey, I'm still drawn to a female's posterior. What can I say, I'm old-school!
As our ancestors began to walk upright, rather than males being attracted to the female's posterior, they began to focus on the breasts and the lips -- they call this "genital echoes."
Has kissing changed much over time? Do certain styles of kissing come into fashion?"Soul kiss." That's amusing.
Well, I love the French kissing story. It turns out that when people were traveling through Europe, there was this notion that women in France were more openly affectionate. There became this saying: "While in France, get the girls to kiss you." That sort of evolved to be: "Get a French kiss." But in France they don't call it that, they call it a "tongue kiss" or a "soul kiss," because it's supposed to feel like two souls merging.
What happens physiologically when we kiss?
A lot. It depends on the kind of kiss, of course. If you're talking about a good kiss, our pulse quickens and our pupils dilate, which is probably part of the reason we close our eyes. There's also a rise in dopamine, which is responsible for the craving and longing, that can't-wait-to-be-with-you sensation. It's also stimulated by a lot of recreational drugs like cocaine; kissing sends us on a natural high. Dopamine spikes from really longing for something for a while and then getting it. When we've been dreaming about someone for a long time and then finally get it, dopamine is involved.
Serotonin causes obsessive feelings about someone. It's also the same neurotransmitter involved in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It sounds a lot like the symptoms of falling in love. Everyone loves to talk about sex, but kissing is probably the most intimate activity we can engage in.
I'm a good kisser. Just saying.
There's a strong gender divide in how we view kissing, isn't there?
Absolutely. There's a huge gender divide. In one large study of college-age students, strong patterns emerged: Women were constantly complaining about too much tongue and men were saying, "I really like wet kisses, lots of saliva!" The guys were usually eager to foray into sex without kissing and very few women were. Women paid a lot more attention to the teeth and breath of the person. Men tended to say they would consider starting a relation with someone just because they were a good kisser, and women were not that way. The act of kissing has a lot more significance for women than men. Men tend to report that kissing is a means to an end; women tend to try to figure out what the kiss means about their relationship, what it says about how their partner feels toward them.
Why might this be?
I started getting really frustrated by these findings, because I felt the results were very stereotypical. So I got together 80 of my own friends and acquaintances, and I was pretty shocked to see that they fell almost completely in the same pattern. When you start looking at reproductive strategies, it makes sense: A woman puts a lot more investment into the [sexual] decisions she makes, because she is fertile for a much shorter period of time each month, and a man can theoretically inseminate countless women throughout his life. Women are a lot more sensitive to smell and taste, which can tell a lot about a partner's health and reproductive capacity.
There's a great study looking at attraction and scent. It turns out that women are able to identify men who have a very different genetic code from their own, and they tend to be more attracted to them, because if they mate, their children would be healthier and stronger and more likely to survive because of the diversity in their genetics. Interestingly enough, women who are taking the birth control pill seem to have the opposite reaction. They're more attracted to men with genetic immunities similar to their own. It starts to make you wonder what all these hormones that we take are starting to do to our bodies and whether they're masking these signals that we've developed over thousands and thousands and thousands of years. I came across some pieces asking, "Is it possible that for some couples divorce is a result of the woman going off hormones and all of a sudden feeling less attracted to her partner?" It's certainly an important question to ask.
I don't know where I come down on this -- for me, it's never a means to an end. A good kiss is wonderful, but she can't have bad breath; that's just instantly off-putting for me. I don't particularly dwell on meaning, because if you're kissing at all, she's got to be digging you on some level, at least I'd like to think so. But I think a woman's health (and, heh) reproductive capacity does matter to me. Like if she looks sickly, she's going to not be appealing to me. The idea that birth control pills can twist a woman's attraction response is kind of freaky.
