Why Do We Close Our Eyes When We Kiss?

“From the first kiss. Had your eyes wide open. Why were they open?” sang Bruno Mars in Grenade. This made us wonder why was he so weird about kissing with open eyes. He did had a point, as kissing with our eyes open isn’t the most common thing to do. But why? Maybe kissing with our eyes closed improves our kissing? According to a study in Royal Holloway, University of London, it doesn’t improve our kissing, but it enhances our kissing experience.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, was coordinated by cognitive psychologists Polly Dalton and Sandra Murphy. They discovered that our sense of touch is not that keen when we are looking at something at the same time. Which means our brains don’t process the best of both stimuli at the same time.

To get to their findings, a group of 16 participants performed several visual tasks –letter searching. Researchers measured their sense of touch by sending vibrations to one of the volunteers’ hands, to which they had to react. Dalton and Murphy noticed how tactile sensations’ perception was reduced when engaged in a more challenging visual assignment.

“This does imply that reducing visual demands (for example, by shutting your eyes) can improve tactile awareness, and this could be one of the reasons that people shut their eyes when kissing.”

But what does this mean? “This does imply that reducing visual demands (for example, by shutting your eyes) can improve tactile awareness, and this could be one of the reasons that people shut their eyes when kissing.” said Dalton to Medical Daily.

So now you know that kissing with our eyes opened isn’t bad nor does it affect our kissing performance. But kissing with eyes closed enhances the experience as a whole. Plus closing our eyes makes the situation less awkward than it should be. So hooray on that Bruno Mars!

Sources

Dovey, D. (2016). Sensory Overload: Kissing With Eyes Open Feels Strange Because The Brain Is Doing Too Much, Hindering Pleasure. july 2017, de Medical Daily Sitio web: http://www.medicaldaily.com/multitasking-sensory-overload-kissing-eyes-open-378687

Editorial Staff (2016). Science Explains Why People Close Their Eyes When They Kiss. july 2017, de NextShark Sitio web: https://nextshark.com/why-people-close-their-eyes-when-they-kiss/

Edited by Viveca Shearin