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Kissing means more to women than
to men
5 September, 2007:
Women use kissing as a means to assess
a relationship and its future, while
men seem to kiss in an attempt to
increase the chance of having sex.
A study conducted in the United states
has revealed that women give more
importance to kissing and are more
likely to evaluate their partner’s
kissing
ability on factors such as the smell
of their breath and the appearance of
their teeth.
The study of more over 1,000 students,
most of them aged 18 to 25, at the New
York State University, the United
States, also found that fewer women
than men are willing to have sex
without kissing their partners first.
Women also feel that a bad kisser is
less attractive.
The study, published in Evolutionary
Psychology, finds that men are less
discriminating when it comes to
deciding who to kiss or who to have
sex with.
Further findings show that men tend to
employ romantic kissing as a means of
increasing sexual receptivity and
gaining sexual access to affect
conflict resolution and to possibly
monitor the fertility of his mate, the
study says.
A woman places a greater importance on
kissing not only to make more
judicious mate assessments but also,
for those in committed relationships,
kissing is used to update, monitor,
and assess the status of their
partner's continuing commitment or the
lack of a relationship.
In other words, a “good kiss” will
help convince a woman that the partner
is worth persevering, but a man who is
judged to be a bad kisser “is unlikely
to find himself invited in for
coffee.”
A woman treats kissing as a means to
induce bonding and to help her assess
whether her partner has remained
faithful and interested.
For a man, the kiss is much less
important – it might be a source of
hormonal information, but it is mostly
regarded as a preliminary to sex. A
man tends to regard a good kiss as one
in which he is allowed to use his
tongue and is rewarded with moans of
pleasure, the study found.
Dr Gordon Gallup, of the University at
Albany, the United States, said: “The
information conveyed by a kiss can
have profound consequences for
romantic relationships, and can even
be a major factor in ending one. While
many forces lead two people to connect
romantically, the kiss – particularly
the first one – can be a
deal-breaker.”
The study also suggests that clues to
a person’s health are passed on by
kissing. These clues are picked up and
understood – consciously or
unconsciously – by the kissers, but
are more important to the female, the
researchers said, because she is more
interested in a long-term relationship
compared with the man who is often an
“opportunistic mater.”
Women are more likely than men to take
into account the smell of their
partner’s breath, the taste of their
mouth, and the state of their teeth
during a kiss.
According to the researchers, the
study provides evidence that “romantic
kissing may have evolved as an
adaptive courtship strategy that
functions as a mate-assessment
technique, a means of initiating
sexual arousal and receptivity, and a
way of maintaining a bonded
relationship.”
Women were less than half as likely to
have sex with a man without first
enjoying a kiss, and they were less
likely to tolerate the use of tongues
on a first date.
By contrast, men show themselves to be
far less fussy and were much more
likely both to continue to want sex
even with a bad kisser or without
bothering with a kiss.
Once a relationship was established,
the researchers found, men grew less
interested in kissing, whereas women
continued to give kisses a high
priority. They were much more likely
to kiss a partner after sex than men
were.
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