I saw this article on why humans kiss, and my first thought was dread — it’s going to be another of those horrible evo psych articles, isn’t it? But to my happy surprise, it isn’t, and the article is pretty good.
The main thing that pleased me was the approach: rather than assuming that the Western habit of kissing was both natural and ancestral, they looked at other cultures: the majority don’t kiss, and some even think it’s a disgusting practice. Then they did a little comparative ethology, and noted that most mammals don’t do it, either, but some primates do…and bonobos do it more than chimpanzees. It gets a little dicey when it talks about human pheromones and that somewhat shakey study about women being able to sense MHC with their noses, but OK, it’s a possibility that kissing is just a side-effect of pheromone detection. Then they concluded that it was a fairly recent cultural innovation, primarily in Western societies.
So, actually, a kind of evo psych approach can get my approval when it involves actual comparative data, is cautious in its interpretations, and doesn’t try to justify accepted Western behavior as the ancestral norm.
I was going to say that this sounds more like an anthropological study than an evo-psych study. And then I clicked through to the paper – sure enough, it’s published in American Anthropologist.
Not that concerned about why we do it, just pleased that we do. Big fan of Australian kisses (they’re like French kisses, but down under).
It is good to learn that you can accept some evo-psych! I agree that a big chunk of it is crappy science.
Anyway, I remember reading somewhere of African populations that do gentle biting instead of kissing.
This article traces early citation of mouth to mouth kiss to east (India).
A Short History of the Kiss in India
Confession: I’m that into kissing. It’s fine, even tons of fun, in small doses and in the right contexts, but I REALLY don’t like extended kissing. It makes me uncomfortable and I find it boring. No matter how attracted I am to someone, or how much I like or love them, I do not want to have an extended make-out session. My brain just starts going in a million directions and then I feel bad because I’m not as into it as my partner is. I might super like them but it makes me feel like I don’t. Kind of sucks because SO MANY PEOPLE love kissing.
@5 marilove
Third word in post missing? “not”?
Hahaha. Yes. Thank you! I totally a word there. Sorry about that. “Confession: I’m NOT that into kissing.” == correct sentence.
@ 5 marilove
Same here; exactly the same! I’m so glad it’s not just me!
I wouldn’t think that a mostly harmless but potentially very pleasurable activity people can stumble across requires much explanation. People have found all sorts of ways to play with the nerve ending rich areas of their own bodies, and the bodies of others.
I think the pheromone stuff is a stretch, since last I heard the neural wiring to respond to pheromones just isn’t there in humans (not my field, just something I heard, I could be wrong).
The question that the article makes me want to ask is whether clothing and other accoutrements of modernity has anything to do with it. If it is derived from sniffing, then a culture in which people are clothed and/ or in which there is a tradition of bathing might be one in which we have to get our chemical cues from other sources. Kissing would do that. (Wouldn’t it?)
Does anyone know how the non-kissing cultures compare to the kissers in terms of the amount of clothing they use, their use of bathing and perfumes and so on? What happens when a stone-age culture makes the leap to modernity? Do they become more amenable to kissing?
But since we tend to call that “anthropology” instead of “evolutionary psychology”…
And then I see jerthebarbarian has already noted as much. :-)
In one of his books, Frans de Waal tells the story of a zookeeper who was experienced with chimps encountering a bonobo for the first time. The bonobo offered him a kiss, which the zookeeper accepted. He’d received chaste kisses from chimpanzees before, and was nonplussed when the bonobo stuck his tongue in his mouth. :)
congenital cynic @2:
Double entendre?
I suppose if you’re going to interact with a social non-human species on their level, it pays to understand their social signals! …Also, it’d be a mistake to generalize a whole species based on one individual’s behavior, too. For all I know, it could’ve just been the one bonobo who was really into tongue.
(No, really, it’s just “for all I know”. I haven’t the faintest idea what’s prevalent in bonobo kissing behavior.)
Either way, of course, I suppose the veteran bonobo-keepers should’ve told him “careful there, bonobos/this bonobo uses their tongue”, unless they figured the misunderstanding would be amusing and harmless. :)
As I remember from when I was dating (over 40 years ago!), I found the smell of the body odor and taste of a kiss of some first dates to be particularly off-putting. When I began dating my hubby, he smelled and tasted “just right” to me.
This is just my anecdotal experience, but I wonder whether there is anything to it?
I wonder how the adoption of kissing relates to the adoption of romantic love in time?
uncle frogy
magistramarla @15,
I’ve had very similar experiences. Sometimes, I very much liked my date (personality-wise), but unfortunately, couldn’t overcome their scent (it wasn’t an odor from poor hygiene, either).
More precisely, the kind of “evolutionary” “psychology” that isn’t crap science tends to not call itself “evo-psych” since the evo-phrenologists have pretty much ruined the label.
I can’t get enough air through my nose for any extended period of time. >.>
“Western behavior as the ancestral norm”
Culture clash:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20037090,00.html
@13 Tony
Double entendre? Oh yes! But in no way intended as a joke.
@15 magistramarla
Oh, I agree with you completely. I think that the personal body chemistry (presented in the form of scent) of ones mate is HUGELY important. I’ve felt this way since I was in uni. I could go on about this, but won’t drag out the comment.
And if I’m not mistaken, there are three places on the human body where these scents are secreted: the crotch, the armpits, and the area of the face around the mouth and nose. I recall having read this somewhere, and it lines up with my observations. One of the reasons I dislike scented things (soaps, perfumes, etc.) is that they would mask the amazing scent of my spouse.
@17 carbonfox
I had the same experience back in the days of dating. It was just olfactory wrong.
While we are on the subject of bonobos, I’m not surprised that one slipped the zookeeper the tongue. I once heard a woman interviewed on CBC radio who was researching the social and sexual practices of bonobos, and after having described a situation to the host of the program, he asked, “So, would you say that bonobos were bisexual?” Her answer was fantastic. She said, “No, I’d say they were more like ‘trisexual’, as in, when it comes to things sexual they will try anything.”
I find lip-to-lip kissing utterly gross. I’ve been able to tolerate it, for partners who really ‘needed’ it, but… Ick.
I’m glad to read that I’m not totally unique in that regard.
Not entirely certain where to put this — so I’ll stick it here even though it has nothing to do with the kissing post. (Good post, though).
I’m on a research trip, am struggling with jet lag, and am trying to get myself to stay awake by watching Youtube. Went down a creationist rabbit hole and found myself watching Ken Ham.
Hasn’t he always refused to define a ‘kind’? Well, in this massive horrible preaching spectacular he does, quite concretely: “kind” is the same as ‘Family’. Not species, and not even genera: family. This is in answer to ‘how did Noah fit all the animals on the ark’: Ham explains that there was lots of space, and Noah only had to take one pair of from each family. Take one pair of domestic dogs, and within a few decades, foxes and wolves and coyotes and dingos would develop. Even better, he’d only need to take ONE PAIR OF CATS (of any species) and within a few decades or centuries, the full diversity of tigers and lions and leopards and cheetahs and wildcats would develop out of a pair of moggies.
It starts at 35 minutes in. He really says this, concretely. It’s illustrated. With taxonomic charts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLWa5WoQt64
And there’s something in there about his ‘research scientists’ working on the argument that species don’t matter: apparently, if any species in a family can interbreed with any other species then they’re all basically the same…which of course eliminates ring species as evidence of evolution.
I thought I’d put this here because I don’t think he’s ever been this specific about it. And it’s visibly lunatic. The more he explains, the worse it gets…I won’t even talk about the freaking ‘poodles have less DNA than wolves’ shit…
It’s only a double entendre if you’re thinking of doing it twice.
I always thought (and this is the worst pick up line since the i’m polymerase and just want to unzip your genes) is that kissing was a way to sample gut bacteria for compatibility between two individuals. We know that people with similar immune systems are attracted to each other, kissing could be a way to sample that. No proof, just a supposition….
What? It’s *not* from Roman times when husbands wanted to see if their wives had been breaking into the wine supplies????
You led me astray once again, L.M. Boyd!
@28 Lance:
I thought the claim was the other way around – that we were selecting for someone with a different immune system, which’d mean the offspring have a chance of getting the best of both? Either way, though, the theories don’t seem to be wildly incompatible, if we take it that it’s a search for some kind of chemical cue. /notabiologist
In short, it can be good when done properly. Agreed.
I’m unsure about the suggestion that kissing is to give you an excuse to get close enough to smell. We already have hugging and other forms of romantic contact, which the study seems to suggest that non-kissing cultures still indulge in, so why bother to develop another excuse to get close to someone? Presumably any pheromones would also be present in saliva? Surely a more likely explanation would be that hugging and other forms of intimate contact are for smelling, and kissing is merely one step beyond this (I’m assuming that actually tasting the other person’s saliva allows your brain to analyse the chemistry more accurately)?
The question which logically follows from that hypothesis is why some cultures decided that smelling simply wasn’t good enough, and moved to kissing as well. Like Enzyme at #10, I’d like to see a study which analyses the correlation between the prevalence of clothing and washing in various cultures with their propensity for romantic kissing.
@30 Enzyme
That was also my understanding of the research, that our olfactory systems sniff out people who have different immune systems, giving the chance that the progeny have the strongest immune systems.
All I can think of, in light of the return of Bloom County, is that “lip-mashing is an oddity in the wild kingdom.”
(Just as a data point, I love kissing and I have no sense of smell, and according to friends don’t have much of a scent, personally.)
I had always suspected kissing stemmed from mothers feeding infants. As a step between nursing and eating solid food, mothers masticated the food and delivered it orally. This is purely a guess on my part.
@jrochest, #26
Well, he’s certainly welcome to demonstrate! Remember kids, we know evolution doesn’t work because it can’t be duplicated! *nods sagely*
All this learned discussion, and not one mention of Sheril Kirshenbaum’s book. I haven’t read it, but it must say something worth knowing about the subject.