"People seem to need to do to connect with someone." 7. Though there isn't enough research to say whether this practice (or licking, sucking or blowing on a lover's face) produces the same feel-good chemicals as kissing, "It's fair to say that we're doing them for same reasons," Kirshenbaum said. Eskimos don't actually 'kiss' by rubbing noses.īut Canadian Inuits, as well as New Zealand's Maori people, do use their noses similarly to the way we use our lips: They sniff a loved one's face hard enough to suction the skin between their nose and upper lip. "Now kissing is exported and we're using mouthwash and toothpaste, so in some ways the experience is so much better than before it became a common custom," she says. Still, non-kissing cultures did kissy things like lick, suck or blow on a lover's face before intercourse, Kirshenbaum writes. Kissing seems "almost completely universal" among humans today, Kirshenbaum said.īut it wasn't always so she cites the work of anthropologist Helen Fisher, who's noted that certain South African tribes once "found kissing disgusting" and that it was previously "unknown" among people in parts of East Africa and South America. Pressure and stimulation of the lips releases feel-good hormones such as oxytocin, often called the love or bonding hormone, so we're primed from infancy to enjoy the sensation, whether it's from nursing or kissing, Kirshenbaum said. Though there's no way to say for sure why people do it, kissing may have evolved from the early human practice of pre-chewing food for babies, when moms would pass sustenance to their children with their lips. "The earliest literary evidence we have for kissing dates back 3,500 years to India's Vedic Sanskrit texts, but given that we see so many similar behaviors in other species, humans have likely been connecting this way as long as we have been here on Earth," Kirshenbaum said. "Just a light brush on them stimulates a very large part of the brain-an area even more expansive than would be activated by sexual stimulation below the belt," Kirshenbaum wrote. Science also provides some clues: It turns out that a disproportionate amount of brain space is taken up with processing information from the lips compared to the rest of our bodies. The famous Indian sex text, the Kama Sutra, advises going for the lips, of course, as well as the inside of the mouth, the breasts, the throat and most places on the face. "It probably depends on who you ask - it's culturally influenced," Kirshenbaum said. Even a light lip-brushing is a huge turn-on for our brains. "Getting to know someone fosters a bond and makes the likelihood of a kiss going well higher," she said. Lay off the pressure - it produces the stress hormone cortisol, a real buzz kill. Still, Kirshenbaum said, "There are definitely things people can learn to make it a better experience."
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