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Kissing helps assess mates’ immunity – evolutionary psychologist. Oh, wait ….

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First Kiss
First Kiss/Alena Kratochvilova

Kissing helps assess mates’ immunity – evolutionary psychologist. Oh, wait ….

Here’s a fun bit of nonsense from earlier this year: In “20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Kissing” (Discover, March 19, 2011), Sheril Kirshenbaum informs us of one of the many evolutionary benefits of kissing:

7 Being close enough to kiss helps our noses assess compatibility. In a landmark study, evolutionary biologist Claus Wedekind of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland reported that women prefer the scents of men whose immunity-coding genes are different from their own. Mixing genes that way may produce offspring with a stronger immune system.

And just think: This evolved in societies that do not kiss before marriage. And in the vast majority of human societies where women have not usually chosen their own partners, may never have seen them, and could only hope that best that family decision-makers took their interests into account.

It’s a really good argument for advance design in human evolution … too bad we didn’t think of it first.

As a friend says, “Nice going, evolutionary psychology.”

See also: Steve Pinker – actually – thinks that most people believe evolutionary psychology but don’t see it as a force for good

and

Evolutionary psychologist Robert Trivers wants to fix you, can’t say why

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Comments
Hogwash. We should have better people getting these jobs. Kissing is simply drawing souls together. One is simply symbolically bringing the inner part of you, your being, into the inner part of the other person. One is trying to climb inside as it were. Get inside to that other persons soul. by the mouth is for the most intimate. on the cheek etc is not that close but pretty close. Nothing to do with actually touching or tasteing a person. In opening ones mouth one is opening ones heart. In fact only humans kiss. Animals lick or touch each other to be close but are never in intention as close as people. We are made in Gods image. We profoundy connnect to other people and so profoundly try to swallow each other as it were to get each other in our souls. Critters don't go that far .Robert Byers
December 5, 2011
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