Believe it or not, there are some people that do nothing all day other than watch other people kiss. And we’re not talking about perverts or porn producers here. There are plenty of scientific studies done on kissing, mostly because we’re still not really sure why it is that humans kiss so much, and why it’s so widespread throughout different cultures. One of the biggest kissing studies done recently was completed  in 2007 by a group of researchers called Hughes, Harrison and Gallup. These guys tested over a thousand subjects, and then wrote a neat little report about them. What did they find? Pretty much what you might expect…

The Persuasiveness of a Kiss

The study showed that men and women use kissing as a form of “mate assessment” (1i.e. checking someone out before you commit to jumping in the sack with them), and that good kissers were more likely to get laid than bad kissers. Intuitive so far. They also found that kissing leads to arousal and therefore to sex (1duh), and that kissing is often a necessary part of foreplay (1duh again). So far, we’re wondering why these guys got funding to research something that most of us could have told them for five bucks (1or even free), but things do start to get a little more interesting.

Having found the obvious, the study then went on to look at what a good kiss is. It’s all very well saying that a good kisser is more likely to get laid, but what exactly is a good kisser doing that a bad kisser isn’t?

What Makes a Kiss Good

Apparently, there are four elements to a good and successful kiss. If you’re going to be a great kisser (1and therefore improve your chances of whoever you’re kissing agreeing to get into bed with you), then you might want to take note of what respondents considered to be important…

The first element is hygiene. This is a no brainer. Brush your damn teeth. Fresh breath and clean teeth were seen as the first sign of a good kiss, so that rules out garlic for dinner…

Second, both men and women said that a good kiss was assertive. Putting a little oomph into your kiss, and kissing enthusiastically (1but not so enthusiastically that you drool everywhere) were seen as more attractive and therefore better.

Third up, we’ve got physical contact. Now obviously, if you’re kissing there’s some lip to lip physical contact going on there. But interestingly, respondents rated kisses with more body contact to be better. That means touching, holding, stroking, even full body contact whilst kissing equals a better kiss. This doesn’t mean that you need to dry hump or anything, but you should be doing something with your hands…

The last element of a good kiss was progression. A kiss that started out with closed mouth then slowly progressed to opening mouths, licking, nibbling and then full on French style kissing was considered a better kiss than one that got straight down to tonsil licking business.

So there you have it. If you want to be a scientifically good kisser, all you need to do is follow those four rules, and you’ll be a shoo in for getting laid tonight…

Sources & references

Sources related to: "The Science of a Good Kiss"