Have you ever tried to kiss someone with your head straight, without tilting it a little ? Difficult huh ? If we tilt our head to the side to kiss, it’s because right in the middle of the face, our nose prevents us from kissing while keeping our heads straight. Some lean their heads to the right and others to the left. Two Dutch people carried out an experiment in order to determine if the choice of the side of inclination of the head had a relationship with the other lateralizations.
Everyone has their favorite side to kiss. Indeed, people will unconsciously tend to kiss on one side more than the other. There is a lateralization of the kiss, just as there is a lateralization of the hand, the foot and the eye. We know that people tend to kiss with their heads tilted to the right and that there are significantly more right-handers than left-handers. Right-handed people are more reluctant than left-handed people to write or throw something with their other hand, and they’re more likely to use their dominant hand in every task that comes their way.
Two Dutch people wondered if this asymmetry during kissing could be linked to other lateralizations and if, as is the case for the hand, people who kiss on the right change sides less than people who kiss on the left. They therefore developed an experiment, using a plastic head installed on a mobile device, so as to tilt it at different angles. 57 people, aged 18 to 33, therefore kissed the plastic head 35 times on the mouth, which was tilted to the right or left at random, or remained vertical.
Among the participants, 72% of them tilted their heads to the right to kiss. And they were actually more likely than the others not to change the position of their head even when the plastic head was already leaning in that same direction, forcing the participants of the experiment to twist their necks to be able to reach the mouth of the fake head. Can we deduce that the inclination of the head during the kiss is related to the other asymmetries of movement? According to the researchers, “there is no conclusive statistical link. Either because there are none, or because the sample population was not large enough. So we can’t say if there is a common structure of lateral preferences for the moment, so the best thing is to follow the spiderman technique and kiss upside down: you’re centrist!
Source: Laterality, science guide