On Valentine’s Day, people enjoy showering their loved ones with chocolates, flowers, greeting cards and of course, kisses! This simple act of affection has been known to not only increase closeness in relationships, but also to relieve stress and lower cholesterol levels. According to a study featured in Psychology Today, couples were instructed to kiss their partners more than usual over a duration of six weeks. Following the study, individuals reported lower levels of stress and higher relationship satisfaction. The article further states that, “Affectionate communication – including, of course, kissing – has long been regarded as important and productive.”
Believe it or not, there’s a lot more that goes into the science of a simple kiss than we think. Whether you’re single and searching for a partner or involved in a long term relationship, kissing is an important part of relationship success. But why is it so important? Gordon G. Gallup Jr., a psychology professor at the University at Albany, has the answer.
“I think there’s pretty good consensus among evolutionary psychologists that kissing is part of an evolved courtship strategy that involves unwittingly the exchange of important information that they bear on the future of that relationship,” Gallup said. “We found for example, based on large surveys that we’ve done, that the majority of both males and females report that one time or another they found themselves attracted to someone, only to discover after they kiss them for the first time that they’re no longer interested.”
The professor went on to discuss that the first kiss often serves as a “make-or-break proposition,” signaling the reproductive compatibility of the smitten smoochers.
“At the moment of a kiss, there’s a very complicated exchange of information involving chemical, tactical and postural cues. Those queues may be processed by hardwired innate mechanisms that then make a determination about whether continuation in that relationship would be in your long term reproductive best interests, in terms of whether you and that person are genetically compatible,” Gallup said.
Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist and former editor of The Journal of Comparative Psychology, has over 250 publications of research ranging from evolution and human behavior, human reproductive competition, and the biology of interpersonal attraction.
While discussing the science behind kissing, Gallup also divulged other factors that induce attraction among partners. Numerous physical attributes including facial attractiveness, body configuration, and even voice attractiveness all play a role in determining who we choose to pucker up with.
“When females are in the fertile stage of their menstrual cycles, men rate their voices as more attractive than when they’re in other phases of their cycle,” Gallup said.
When finding love, it really is all about the chemistry. But kissing and attraction are not just important in the beginning stages of finding a partner. Studies suggest that females with long term partners often use kissing to maintain and upgrade information about the status of the relationship.
“There’s also recent evidence that suggests, not only is the amount of kissing a barometer of a relationship, but if you make an effort to kiss more, it may improve and revitalize the quality of the relationship,” Gallup said.
Over 90 percent of human cultures engage in romantic kissing. While other species have been observed engaging in kissing-like activities, humans are believed to be the only creatures to engage specifically in romantic kissing.
Gallup gave some insight as to how romantic kissing may have evolved among humans. He explained that some psychologists believe it originated as a primitive feeding strategy between mother and child when introducing chewed up food into the infants mouth. This exchange from one mouth to the other may be what represents some of the primal origins of kissing. Probably not something we want to be thinking about next time we kiss someone, but still an interesting evolutionary perspective!
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner and love in the air, Gallup offered some perspective as to why the holiday is celebrated in our society. “I think bonding was one of the very important evolved features in human reproductive competition. In our culture, it’s celebrated, it’s testimony to its importance.”
From The Beatles singing “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you” in “All My Loving,” to the dramatic kiss of Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With the Wind, kissing has and always will be an important part of what makes us humans tick.
