As it turns out, humans being are awfully strange and complex creatures when it comes to topics such as love, forming relationships, and having sex. What’s seen as run-of-the-mill and standard practice to one individual, might be downright shocking to another — with experiences relating to these subjects existing on a spectrum as diverse as the differences between the individuals themselves.
In attempts to unravel some of the mystery behind why we are the way that we are, researchers within the field of Psychology have been hard at work creating experiments, and developing theories to help better explain the various intricacies of human behavior.
From particularly hilarious to thoroughly bizarre, here are some of my favorite findings of the research — but be warned: things might get a little bit weird…
1. Sloppy Joe
It’s no secret that kissing plays a vital role in our courting rituals, as well as both long and short-term relationships. Although it might not seem like the most important aspect of human connection, kissing exists as a form of affection in just about every culture and society in the world.
Science suggests that the act of kissing, and the inevitable exchange of saliva to accompany it, is a fascinating way for individuals to subconsciously assess the genetic and reproductive quality of a partner.
Whether through smell, taste, or a combination of the two, this process is thought to occur on a chemosensory level, where biological cues for fertility, genetic compatibility, and even the strength of the immune system are able to be picked up on.
The most important finding of this particular study conducted on the phenomenon of kissing, however, was that males, compared to females, are significantly less sensitive to chemosensory cues, and are, therefore, likely to require the much greater salivary exchange to make any unconscious assessments about their partners. (1).
Yup —as it turns out, there’s a biological reason men prefer those wet, open mouth, sloppy full-tongue kisses, and what’s more, is that has to do with judging the other person!
2. Right Time And (Life) Place
Making a marriage work is hard work, and research shows that the odds are, sadly, not exceedingly in our favor.
Psychologically speaking, the likelihood of individuals to remain together after getting hitched is an incredibly complicated thing to predict, with factors of indication ranging from shared life experiences, to facial structure similarity (yes, really)!
Numerical data, on the other hand, is a little less complicated, and researchers have been able to pin-point a sweet spot that exists between the ages of 28 and 32. Bizarrely, every year a couple marries before the age of 28 has an 11% increased risk of divorce, and every year after 32 has an extra 5% risk, too (2).
Now you know.
You don’t know why, (neither does Psychology) but, at least now you know.
3. First Is Worst, Second Is Best
Birth order has been the subject of psychological interest since the 1930’s when famed researcher and theorist, Alfred Adler, first began examining the impact on personality that results from being the eldest child.
Since the 1930s, our understanding about what shapes the development of individual personality has become infinitely more nuanced, with the notion of birth order being a primary influence being largely dismissed within academia.
Nonetheless, the relevance of studying birth order when it comes to the formation of long-term relationships remains; your family are the first long-term relationship you will ever have, after all, and studies have shown that the way you interact with them throughout childhood has a tendency to crop up again and again in later interpersonal connections.
A specific finding of the research is that middle-born children are significantly more likely to form stronger friendships and romantic bonds outside of the family and to be less family-oriented, in general. This is theorized to result from the fact that middle-born children usually receive a lesser degree of parental support and investment than their first-born and last-born siblings.
As a result, they often become highly successful at creating alliances and support systems with non-related persons and tend to differ in their mating and dating strategies, too. When it comes to infidelity research, middle-born children are, therefore, the least likely of all the birth orders to cheat on a sexual partner (3).
Go middle-borns!
4. Smell You Later (In The Bedroom)
It’s common knowledge, that arousal involves most, if not all, of the senses, but what the researcher didn’t anticipate was the extent to which smell would have implications for women’s pleasure in the bedroom.
We’re not talking about the smell of fresh roses, and vanilla-scented room candles, though. Instead, studies have revealed that independent of what participants were smelling while they got down and dirty, women with a stronger sensitivity to odors, were significantly more likely to experience a greater frequency of orgasm, than those who are smelling less, in general (4).
What’s more, is that no correlations were discovered between having a highly sensitive olfactory system and presenting an increase in sexual desire, or sexual performance — the benefits of a good nose being exclusively linked to heightened sexual pleasure. That’s some funky funny business.
4. Hand-Holding Hierarchy
Hand-holding is a behavior used in a variety of contexts to signify anything from a romantic gesture between lovers to the art of safely crossing the road between a caretaker and a small child.
As a behavior, hand-holding is so simple and effortless that most people don’t even think about it, yet psychological research indicates that the way we hold hands with other people might have more to say about our relationships than we think.
A study of 886 individuals and their natural hand-holding inclinations revealed that over 90% of males in heterosexual relationships, parents in parent-child pairs, and older siblings in child-siblings pairs tended to place their hand on the top, with the women or younger children, respectively, on the bottom.
These dramatic results have lead researchers to conclude that the way we hold hands has a lot to do with social dominance. The individual assuming the dominant role in these instances, unknowingly portraying their place in the hierarchy via the way they hold hands. Women who initially placed their hands under their partners were found to switch positions when holding hands with a child, rejecting the idea that the behavior is occurring solely based on preference (5).
6. Co-Habitation Frustration
Ever fancied your neighbor? How about that housemate you had for a few months over the summer? Well, psychology recently turned it attention to the development of sexual attraction between cohabiting peers, or individuals who were raised together… with some interesting findings along the way.
One study, in particular, examined Israeli Kibbutzim — self-contained agricultural communities where children are raised collectively — as the perfect opportunity to gain insight into peer relations, free from the norms of more individualistic societies.
What they found, interestingly, is that for males, a longer duration of co-residence with female peers led to an increase in self-reported sexual aversion to them — whereas females experience the opposite, wherein a longer duration of co-residence with male peers, actually led to an increase in sexual attraction towards them (6).
Safe to say that biological psychology works in mysterious ways…
7. Suspension Tension
If you’ve ever followed the piece of advice that you should plan the first date around an exhilarating activity, such as going to a theme park or playing laser -tag, then this finding might be right up your alley!
Not only does research show that the experience of an elevated heart-rate lends itself to the development of stronger emotional bonds between two or more individuals, but psychology suggests that fear might be a trigger for sexual arousal — at least in males, that is, as they were the exclusive subject of the research study at hand.
The experiment involved an encounter with an attractive female interviewer, on either a fear-inducing suspension bridge or a non-fear inducing concrete bridge.
Participants’ level of sexual emotions during this experience was measured by the level of sexual content contained within their interviewee reports, as well as their attempts to contact the attractive interviewer following the termination of the experiment. Both of which saw significantly greater outcomes in the male participates interviewed on the fear-inducing suspension bridge (7).
Maybe scary can be sexy, after all — Bill Skarsgård in the movie “It,’ anyone??
Alexandra Walker-Jones — January 2021
Text References:
- Hughes SM, Harrison MA, Gallup GG. Sex Differences in Romantic Kissing among College Students: An Evolutionary Perspective. Evolutionary Psychology. July 2007.
- Wolfinger, N. (2015). Replicating the Goldilocks Theory of Marriage and Divorce. Family Studies. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
- Salmon, C. Birth order and relationships. Hum Nat 14, 73–88 (2003).
- Bendas, J., Hummel, T. & Croy, I. Olfactory Function Relates to Sexual Experience in Adults. Arch Sex Behav 47, 1333–1339 (2018).
- Pettijohn, T.F., Ahmed, S.F., Dunlap, A.V. et al. Who’s got the Upper Hand? Hand Holding Behaviors Among Romantic Couples and Families. Curr Psychol 32, 217–220 (2013).
- Lieberman, D., & Lobel, T. (2012). Kinship on the Kibbutz: Coresidence duration predicts altruism, personal sexual aversions and moral attitudes among communally reared peers. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(1), 26–34.
- Dutton, D. G., & Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of personality and social psychology, 30(4), 510.
