Kissing: Definition, Types, & Tips​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Kissing is a nearly universal way of expressing love and intimacy in human cultures. Let’s see what psychological research has to say about how people use kissing to build and maintain connections.
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When I was a preteen, I spent a lot of time wondering what my first kiss would be like. Perhaps you did, too? It was a rite of passage that I wanted to experience before I was “left behind” by my peers, and an event I hoped would be romantic, exciting, and not too awkward. And fortunately, it was just that. Thanks to the collusion of our friends, my middle school girlfriend and I ended up alone behind a big rock on a warm summer night; in the dusky half-light, we kissed each other, and it did feel just about perfect.
 (Our kiss was laughably worse on the second attempt – perhaps an example of the scientific phenomenon of regression to the mean.)

I think the excitement that surrounds a first kiss makes sense: it represents a major developmental milestone in most people’s lives. We have grown up showing affection to relatives with kisses, and perhaps have grown up in cultures where kissing is part of our rituals of greeting and farewell. But your first kiss with somebody you “like”, “like like”, or “love” (remember all the fine distinctions between those terms?) moves you into a space where kissing has become a romantic gesture that you engage in. From then on, it will likely be a significant part of every romantic relationship you have in your life.

You probably know a lot about kissing – what you like and don’t like, when it feels right or wrong to do it, and so on. But what have scientists learned about kissing? Can this help us understand when and why we kiss? Can it maybe even help us kiss better? Let’s find out.​
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What Is Kissing? (A Definition)​

At its simplest, we can define kissing as when there is direct contact between one person’s lips and another person’s body (Floyd, 2006). Amongst romantic partners, this usually means contact between the lips of one partner and the lips of the other partner. Our lips are particularly sensitive body parts, full of nerve endings and touch receptors, and our lips activate a large part of the somatosensory cortex of the brain, suggesting that they are an especially important source of tactile (touch) information for our brains (Floyd, 2006). Therefore, it is unsurprising that romantic kissing is a powerful sensory and emotional experience for most of us, and that it often ends up involving other forms of romantic or sexual touch.

Why We Like Kissing

One theory as to why we like to kiss and continue to do so throughout our lives – apart from the pleasurable sensations associated with it – is that it may be a form of biological communication (Nicholson, 1984). When you kiss another person, whether on the lips or elsewhere on their bodies, you come into contact with their sebum, an oily substance secreted by our skin to help keep one’s hair and skin from drying out. Sebum may be a semiochemical – a chemical that delivers important information about the person you are kissing, such as the pheromones excreted by their body. Pheromones, whether sensed through kissing or by smell, are an important component of attachment and feelings of sexual attraction (Grammer et al., 2005).
 
It is through this sebum that we also may get valuable information about how complementary our immune systems are; parents having complementary immune systems should result in more resilient offspring (Wedekind et al., 1995), which may explain why people with complementary immune systems are more sexually attracted to each other. Of course, we are generally not conscious of this; instead, we just know that it felt good to kiss this person or that they smelled and tasted good to us.

​​Kissing Across Cultures

It appears that kissing of some form is present in nearly every culture (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970), although romantic kissing may be less ubiquitous (Jankowiak et al., 2015). Very interestingly, romantic kissing appears to be more common and more frequent in more socially complex societies and in those with more income equality (Jankowiak et al., 2015; Watkins et al., 2019; Bedbible Research Center, 2016).
 
Why might this be? One interpretation is that as societies get more complex and less interdependent, the quality of your chosen romantic partner starts to matter more. Think about it: if you lived in a hunter-gatherer society where everybody knew and relied on each other, you might not need to rely that much on the person you were kissing. But in a society as individualistic as the United States, where one’s economic well-being often depends on having a reliable and healthy partner, you might want as much information about another person’s health and compatibility with you as possible.
 
And kissing, it seems, can deliver some important cues about those characteristics (Nicholson, 1984; Wedekind et al., 1995), whether we are aware of it or not. This may explain why close physical contact, such as kissing, seems to be such an integral part of the courtship process (Wlodarski & Dunbar, 2013). This may also explain why people who have reasons to be, or the privilege of being, more selective in choosing partners, such as women (compared to men) and conventionally attractive individuals (compared to less conventionally attractive individuals) seem to place more importance on kissing feeling good with their partners.​

Why Is Kissing Important?​

In romantic relationships, kissing seems to play an important function in both developing and maintaining a love connection (Wlodarski & Dunbar, 2013). Partners use kissing to demonstrate interest, build passion, and continue to show love and investment. People also kiss their partners to encourage their partners to behave in certain ways and to feel better about themselves (Thompson et al., 2019). In these ways, we can see that kissing between romantic partners is also a form of using the relationship to regulate oneself and the other person. For example, a kiss when both partners are finally home at the end of the workday can signal, “I’m here with you now – you are the focus of my attention.”
 
At the same time, as we noted above, kissing as a form of expressing affection and care is present in nearly every human culture (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). All the same motives we have already discussed can be present in non-romantic kissing, too. It is a fundamental component of how people who care about each other, whether friends or family, and in some cultures, it is a firmly established component of greetings, even between two people who are meeting for the first time (Chapelain et al., 2015).
 
For some more thoughts on why kissing is such an essential part of human relationships, I recommend watching this video:

Video: Evolutionary Psychologist - Why Do Humans Kiss?

Types of Kissing

One apparent consistency across all types of kissing is that it seems to take place in the context of positive emotions, be they romantic or platonic (Floyd, 2006). I would argue that even when a kiss occurs outside of a positive relational context, such as when kisses are involved in religious rituals or social greetings between strangers, there is still an atmosphere of respect and care. So while there may be many types of kisses, from the airport reunion kiss between long-distance lovers to the kiss a pilgrim bestows on the Pope’s ring, they all seem to involve the expression of positivity and care.​

Kissing on the Lips

We all know what kissing on the lips looks like, but did you know that scientists have spent lots of time studying how we do it? Specifically, they have been interested in whether people tilt their heads right or left when going in for the kiss (Sedgewick et al., 2019). At first, research suggested that non-romantic kisses appear to feature people tilting their heads leftward, while in romantic couples, people were more likely to tilt their heads to the right.
 
However, some research suggests cross-cultural differences. For example, people from cultures where the primary language is read from left to right (such as English) seem more likely to tilt their heads right, while people who read their primary language from right to left (such as Arabic) seem more likely to tilt their heads left (Shaki, 2013). And an interesting study found that when people (consensually!) kissed somebody on the lips that they were not romantically attracted to, they were about equally likely to tilt their heads right or left (Sedgewick et al., 2019). Finally, our head tilt does not appear to be related to whether we have a dominant right or left hand, right or left eye, and so on (Shaki, 2013).
 
At the present moment, it appears unclear why people prefer to tilt their heads one way or the other when kissing. This is helpful for me, as somebody who wants to tilt left and is confused about why I’m in the minority in my home culture.​

Kissing Vs. Hugging​

Hugging, like kissing, is a common and affectionate way to greet and say goodbye to another person (Astrom, 1993). Perhaps unlike kissing, it can be done in many different ways, with variations in physical proximity, the positioning of one’s hands and arms, the amount of pressure involved, and whether the two bodies fully touch. Nevertheless, hugging and kissing are pretty similar in the emotional, biochemical, and physiological reactions they stimulate (Forsell & Astrom, 2012). Both activities seem to decrease blood pressure and cortisol and increase rates of oxytocin.​

Kissing on the Cheek

Kissing on the cheek seems to be primarily a greeting or an expression of affection between friends or family members (Chapelain et al., 2015). In certain cultures, it is considered rude not to greet another person by kissing on the cheek. In my experience, in the U.S. it is something that mainly occurs among family members, especially when the interactions involve people from older generations.​

Kissing for Couples

Some scholars explain the popularity of kissing in couples by proposing that it is an integral part of the process of pair bonding (Wlodarski & Dunbar, 2013). Simply put, kissing is a key element in the couple becoming attached to each other and maintaining that attachment. The quality of a kiss between two people who have been together for some time seems to reflect the quality of their overall connection (Hughes et al., 2007). This seems to be especially the case for older individuals, who may have more experience with unsatisfying kissing and may place more importance on kissing than on sexual behaviors (Watkins et al., 2019).​

Kissing With Love

Kissing communicates love, and so kissing, especially among couples, is related to healthy relationships. Couples that kiss more often have an easier time resolving conflict and feel more satisfied with their partners and relationships (Gulledge et al., 2003). In support of the idea that kissing reduces stress, participants in a research study that asked them to intentionally kiss with their partners more often perceived themselves to be less stressed out and their relationships as more satisfying (Floyd et al., 2009).​

Kissing on the First Date

Interestingly, the social script that a first date should end with a kiss has remained pretty consistent in American culture for some time (Morr Serewicz & Gale, 2008). This expectation seems far less pervasive in other cultures, such as China (Blair & Scott, 2019).​

Kissing With Herpes

Alongside all of these positive findings about kissing, we do need to keep in mind that kissing is a common way that diseases are transferred from one person to another. For example, sexually transmitted infections such as herpes, the human papillomavirus, and gonorrhea can all be contracted through kissing (Charleson et al., 2023; Chow et al., 2019; Posse et al., 2017).

Tips on Kissing

Believe it or not, there is very little scientific research on what makes a good kisser! So here are my therapist-thinking tips for being a good kisser:
​
  1. Be curious about how you’re doing and open to feedback. You cannot read your partner’s mind, but you can learn about it by asking. Do they like what you’re doing? One good way to put it would be, “Is there anything I could do to make you like this even more?” It may not sound sexy, but it shows that you care and want to make the experience as pleasurable as possible for them.
  2. Kiss when it feels right. Sometimes we give or receive kisses when we aren’t actually in the mood. Good kissing is consensual and contextual: it arises naturally out of a desire to connect, and it is not forced.

Articles Related to Kissing​

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Kissing​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Kissing​

It seems like scientific research has confirmed what we probably already knew: that kissing is a behavior that brings us together and keeps us close, one that is natural and pretty much universal. May we all have as much of this feel-good experience as we want!

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