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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