You must remember this, insists Marissa Harrison: A kiss is never just a kiss.
In a study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, Harrison, an assistant professor of social sciences at BMCC, suggests that men and women kiss for dramatically different reasons. Entitled, “Sex Differences in Romantic Kissing Among College Students: An Evolutionary Perspective,” the study draws on the responses of 1,041 University of Albany undergraduates. (Only those who expressed a preference for kissing members of the opposite sex were included.) Harrison co-authored the study with Susan M. Hughes (Albright College) and Gordon Gallup Jr. (SUNY Albany).
Gender agendas
“Basically, women use kissing as a mate assessment and bonding mechanism,” Harrison says. “Men use kissing as a means to a sexual end.” The differences, she says, are a matter of evolutionary adaptation.
Given their biology, women “are preprogrammed to make more prudent mate choices than men,” she explains. “A woman produces one egg a month, if that, and then takes nine months to give birth, all of which entails a profound reproductive investment. So she is looking for a partner who will stick around.” Men, by contrast, produce millions of sperm daily and “then basically contribute only a one-night stand to become a parent. Their reproductive investment is relatively negligible.”
For women, kissing is a means of gauging a partner’s suitability as a mate. For men, kissing is secondary to distributing their genes as often and widely as possible. In fact, significantly more men than women told the researchers that they would willingly dispense with kissing altogether during sex.
The study also found that men prefer wetter kisses than do women…that women care more about a person’s breath…that men are more inclined to use kissing to end a fight…and that both men and women think it’s not a good idea to begin a relationship on the strength of a person’s kissing skill.
Lips in synch
The researchers also hypothesize that lip contact triggers the release of oxytocin – a neuropeptide that stimulates birth contractions. Just as oxytocin facilitates bonding between mother and child, “it may have the same affect on two people kissing,” Harrison says. However, the study also finds that men are “less sensitive to chemosensory cues.”
Harrison is quick to note that gender-based attitudes toward kissing are not necessarily conscious – or the deciding factors in how people choose mates.
“We’re equipped with frontal lobes that enable us to override unconscious impulses,” she says. “We’re still capable of making rational decision.”
