What’s in a kiss?

What’s really in a kiss? What messages would one convey to the receiver? Are there practices that one must be guided before showing such kind of emotion?

By and large, kissing fosters the sensations we often describe when we are falling in love. In this way, a kiss can herald in a new relationship, romantic or otherwise. It solidifies the strong bonds we share with family members and friends. The way we kiss is very much influenced on the kind of environment we are in and many external influences that bombard us.

As kisses come in many varieties and are inherently tied to the most meaningful and significant moments of our lives, they provide a means to communicate beyond what words can put across.

Kissing is not all about bacterial exchange or romance. Based on our developmental stages, the first experiences with love and security, like nursing and bottle feeding, usually involve lip pressure and stimulation through behaviors that mimic kissing. These early events lay down important neural pathways in a baby’s brain that associate kissing with positive emotions that continue to be important throughout his life.

Ancillary studies have shown that over 90 percent of human society engages in what seems like a very off-the-wall thing to do; putting faces together --and trading spit. But because it is so pervasive, scientists think there must be a good reason for it, some kind of evolutionary advantage. Humans aren’t alone in this ritual as chimpanzees kiss, foxes and dogs lick each other’s faces, some birds tap their bills together, and elephants put their trunks in each other’s mouths.

Kissing has cultural underpinnings as in other situations; kissing behavior is distinctly non-romantic because it carries alternate connotations of ritual worship, social status, or respect. In Central America, for example, instances of romantic kissing are rather low --kissing is often more associated with respect than intimacy.

For instance, in the Ethiopian highlands, Amhara relatives and friends “kiss each other on both cheeks after a long separation, the older or superior in status kissing first. Children and servants greet their superiors by kissing their feet, which they also do to show gratitude for some favor.

In Western cultures, we mark the beginning of romantic entanglement by touching lips. Few actions are as fraught with anxiety and symbolism as that of the first kiss --and it’s no exaggeration to say that some kisses feel like life or death.

And so the kissing cultures, according to the meta-analysis, are couples in economically developed and socially stratified cultures that are almost three times more likely to kiss on the lips than those who live in tribes --who are almost four times more likely to never kiss on the lips than counterparts in complex societies.

Studies in Muslim-majority societies, many of which are in the midst of a transition from arranged to love-based marriages, the results point to a conclusion that confirm again and again kissing is much more important to women than men --and it’s women who appear to have driven the rise of kissing in romantic life. On the other hand, both men and women benefit from kissing as it boosts testosterone in women and oxytocin in men, helping them bond together --and also to stay away from rivals.

But one thing is certain though, that it is one’s unadulterated feelings that would bear out the very reason of kissing somebody taking into account long esteemed sensibilities in a socio-cultural context.