There are many occasions when two people share a kiss on the lips : in moments of desire, to show affection or even by social convention such as closing a wedding ceremony. However, from a scientific point of view, what is the purpose of kisses?
In 2008, Albright University psychologist in Pennsylvania Susan Hughes and her team published a study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology that tested various theories that evolutionary psychologists had long been proposing. They surveyed a total of 1 000 men and women of a very sexually active age (they were university students) to find out their opinion about how they lived and why they had the kissing experience.
The results showed that for both men and women, kissing was an important and very intimate interaction . Both sexes used the kiss to measure their level of compatibility in the relationship with their partners. In addition, both could be more or less attracted to their partners based solely on how satisfying kissing them was, reinforcing the theory that pheromones and other biochemical signals are exchanged when two people kiss.
Do men and women understand kissing the same?
However, from there several differences arose between men and women regarding why and what they kissed for. Women considered that a bad kiss was decisive for not making the bond prosper, just as a good kiss could reinforce the attachment; But, for men, it was likely that they wanted to continue having sex with that person even if they considered him to be a bad kisser.
In addition, the data showed that men feel that a kiss should end in sex much more than women and even that half of them would be willing to have sex with a person without kissing them, compared to 14% of women. To make matters worse, men did not like to kiss after sex, while women were favorable to kisses both before, during and after sexual intercourse.
