NoJo
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From issue 2620 of New Scientist magazine, 08 September 2007, page 22. Posted without comment
WHAT'S in a kiss? Saliva, and potentially important information about your kissing partner.
So says George Gallup at the State University of New York, Albany, who surveyed 1041 students on their attitudes to kissing (Evolutionary Psychology, vol 5, p 612). Some views verged on the predictable: women, for example, placed more emotional importance on a kiss, valuing kisses during and after sex, and throughout a relationship. The men tended to see kissing as a means to an end - sex - and placed less importance on kissing as a relationship progresses. Just over half the men said they would have sex with someone without kissing, compared to 15 per cent of women. And more men than women said that a good kiss was one with tongue contact, where the partner made moaning noises.
But Gallup says the first kiss a couple share could make or break the relationship. In a separate survey, 59 per cent of men and 66 per cent of women reported on occasion finding themselves attracted to someone, only to lose interest after kissing them for the first time. "The complicated exchange of information that occurs during a kiss may inform evolved, unconscious mechanisms about instances of possible genetic incompatibility," Gallup says.
WHAT'S in a kiss? Saliva, and potentially important information about your kissing partner.
So says George Gallup at the State University of New York, Albany, who surveyed 1041 students on their attitudes to kissing (Evolutionary Psychology, vol 5, p 612). Some views verged on the predictable: women, for example, placed more emotional importance on a kiss, valuing kisses during and after sex, and throughout a relationship. The men tended to see kissing as a means to an end - sex - and placed less importance on kissing as a relationship progresses. Just over half the men said they would have sex with someone without kissing, compared to 15 per cent of women. And more men than women said that a good kiss was one with tongue contact, where the partner made moaning noises.
But Gallup says the first kiss a couple share could make or break the relationship. In a separate survey, 59 per cent of men and 66 per cent of women reported on occasion finding themselves attracted to someone, only to lose interest after kissing them for the first time. "The complicated exchange of information that occurs during a kiss may inform evolved, unconscious mechanisms about instances of possible genetic incompatibility," Gallup says.
