Kisses and psychology

Introduction

Who doesn’t love to kiss? It is fair to say that the vast majority of people, enjoy giving and receiving kisses from someone else at some point in their lives, probably even our entire lives. These curious “rituals” can be surely surprising because of how how common they are and for the many meanings they can keep. There are kisses that can act as a way to to reconcile 2 individuals, but they can also denote love, attraction or even courtesy and respect.

And yet, none of this changes the fact that kissing, by itself, seems kind of like a silly act. How can it be natural for us to approach another one and touch this person with our lips?

One hypothesis is that the kiss has evolved as a mechanism for gathering information about potential sexual partners. A kiss brings us into close physical proximity with the other, close enough to smell and taste them. | Source

Why do we kiss?

Finding an answer to this requires, in the first place, to dig into our past, to see what this way of engaging with each other is based on. We can think of kissing as an act to which we have an innate tendency and whose relevance is basic in the conservancy of our race because it help us in finding resolutions to some important issues which are strengthening ties with other people. finding a partner, and of course the developing of strong bonds with said partner. Therefore, asking why do we kiss is also asking about the way in which they have helped us with our survival throughout our history

When it comes to strengthening ties it is very simply to understand how can this be improved because most kisses can be understood as a protocol to show the other that there is no harm and the availability of having a positive relationship with the other. However, this process has an unconscious aspect that goes beyond the symbolic charge associated with the kissing act. Kissing is able to “It connects people emotionally. It can also release endorphins that can make you feel more excited and happy ... It can affect the biochemistry immediately.” | Source

A passionate kiss can spike the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is linked to feelings of craving and desire. Oxytocin, known as the “love hormone”, fosters a sense of closeness and attachment. | Source

If we add up the hormonal rushes quoted above, they can contribute to the creation of the strong feeling we have when a spark of love is starting between 2 individuals. The person with whom the kiss has been shared suddenly becomes something more important and intense. If we then add to this the fact that the kisses could be useful to choose a partner, it seems clear that its functions are focused on reproduction and nurturing.

Our race could be prone towards kissing in the mouth because of its evolutionary legacy, since some animals also have their own form of kissing. The culture, however, is capable of creating varieties of kissing and modeling the way in which they are presented according to the local style.

When we are in need of a partner, we have an unconscious capacity to detect the scents that come from the body of the potential partner. Our sense of smell is obviously the responsible for this task, but the sense of taste is nevertheless important as well.

Being in touch with the saliva of the other person can be useful when it comes to knowing the general state of the body, like hormonal levels and how good the immune system is. In short, kisses in the mouth are a way to indirectly know the state of health of those who are potentials partners, to know to what extent their immune system complements ours, and from there to decide unconsciously if it can be a good person create the next generation.

The brain contains "a huge amount of receptors devoted to picking sensations from the lips… All these sensors aid our survival. They direct a baby toward milk; they helped our ancestors -- for millions of years -- to discern whether their food was poisonous or not. "The mouth is absolutely essential to survival -- everything passes through there, and if it's the wrong thing, you're cooked," | Source

Why do we like to kiss?

Clearly, nobody decides to kiss someone they don’t like, not even to strengthen ties with the person in the case with strangers. The kisses are there because they make us feel good. The evolution has made that the main utility of this type of engagement, which Is not in the short term as strengthening bonds is not something that is done quickly, is disguised by an immediate objective which consists in obtaining pleasure.

This pleasure it is based on the fact that our mouth and lips are very important erogenous zones and that is why they are extremely sensitive to potentially pleasurable stimuli.

Viewed from the brain’s perspective, then, kissing (especially when the tongue is involved) is a very efficient way to provide a rich sensory experience and to maximize brain-to-brain intimacy. | Source

This way, a few seconds of kissing are able to cause an important flow of information that goes directly to our brain, which is why a large part of the mental processes begin to revolve around that experience when it is happening. It is then when the substances named in the previous paragraphs as well as the neurotransmitters related to pleasure and falling in love begin to be massively segregated. Hence, an intense kiss can cause us to us lose the perception of time since our whole body is paying close attention to what happens in this interaction.

Conclusion

The act of kissing has transcend from a simple way of bonding with our closed ones, to an act that demonstrate the love and worship we feel towards other people, and sometimes, towards other things as well. We all have seen people kissing objects as a sign of adoration towards the object itself.

All of this is yet another example of the complexities an organism such as our bodies develop over time, to find ways to clearly communicate important information, which for us now is something very simply to do, but in primitive times it was surely not as easy.