Is kissing really a universal sign of romantic love, and sexual attraction?
Or could you be sending the wrong signals?
Hello everyone, Crystal here for DNews working on my relationship skills and looking for
evidence that a kiss on the lips really does mean the same thing in every culture...
In his writings, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said: “The kiss originated when the first
male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that
she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.”
While weird and oddly sweet, this quote also seems to imply that romantic kissing evolved
as humanity did, but science says that may not actually be true.
First of all what possible evolutionary benefit would be gained by exposing ourselves to potential
pathogens and slobbering all over the person we love?
...Honestly, kissing really should seem gross but somehow ... really isn’t.
In my favorite fun to talk about but difficult to reproduce, “sweaty T-shirt study”,
scientists demonstrated that women were attracted to the smell of sweaty T-shirts belonging
to males that genetically expressed immune related proteins that were complementary to
their own; indicating a link between genetic complementarity and sexual attraction.
Given the intimate relationship that exists between smell and taste it would not be surprising
to find that kissing is another way for us to asses the genetic viability of our potential
mates.
Actually, science has proposed that kissing may be a way of using additional senses to
help us determine everything from health, to the genetic deviation and hormonal profiles
of our partners.
All of which are determining factors in sexual attraction.
But what evidence is there that “kissing may be a human universal rather than a culturally
variable display of affection?”
Scientists from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Indiana University asked exactly
that question in a recent paper published in the journal American Anthropologist.
In their study, the researchers asserted that when it comes to kissing, intent matters.
They defined romantic-sexual kissing that occurs between lovers as a sub-group of general
kissing behavior and then they examined the prevalence of that intentionally erotic, focused,
lip to lip contact in cultures around the world.
Using a combination of existing databases and reports from individual ethnographers,
the authors surveyed 168 cultures from nine geographical areas and they examined incidence
of romantic-sexual kissing in common social practice.
The results indicate that the prevalence of romantic-sexual kissing was not universal
at all.
In fact, within the majority of cultures (54%) surveyed, romantic mouth to mouth kissing
was not the accepted social practice!
While this may seem surprising to us, (previous reports have indicated that kissing was near
universal) the authors warn against western ethnocentrism by stating “while kissing
may be a way to communicate intimacy in some societies or may function as a specific eroticized
activity in others, it is important to note that for quite a few kissing is seen as unpleasant,
unclean, or simply unusual.”
There are, as always, subtleties in the conclusions of this study.
For instance, there is no mention of what portion of the total earth’s population
is composed of cultures that do not accept romantic kissing as common practice.
Interestingly, the authors do also report a correlation between a culture’s level
of social complexity and the presence or absence of the romantic–sexual kiss.
They found that cultures that scored high on a scale of social complexity and had distinct
social classes were more likely to accept the romantic-sexual kiss as a common practice,
and they speculate that the evolution of the kiss may coincide with the development of
oral hygiene or social values of self-control in public emotional displays.
Regardless, after reading their study, we are left with the idea that while kissing
may not be a universal part of the human sexual repertoire, the behavior is anchored in the
“truly universal human capacity for romantic love.”
For more on what we think we know about the science of kissing, check out this video by
Anthony
and Laci