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We’ve seen it in the movies, heck, we even do it ourselves: we kiss with our eyes closed. It’s one of those natural reactions.
But why do we close our eyes when we kiss? Well, there is a scientific reason: apparently we shut our eyes when we smooch because our brains are unable to process visual data at the same time as the physical sensations coming from our lips and tongues.
So, we are able to multitask in pretty much everything we do on a daily basis, except this? Weird.
When we dug a little deeper, we discovered that the research – conducted by Polly Dalton and Sandra Murphy, cognitive psychologists at Royal Holloway, University of London, for the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance – actually didn’t include kissing at all!
In actual fact, the study focused on participants carrying out a visual task while also having to respond to small vibrations being applied to their hands. As the study continued and the tasks got more intense, the psychologists found that the “touch sense” deteriorated.
“If we are focusing strongly on a visual task, this will reduce our awareness of stimuli in other senses,” Polly said in an interview to The Sunday Times.
Turns out that sometimes people would actually rather just focus on the physical instead of the visual, like when we’re kissing or having sex.
“These results could explain why we close our eyes when we want to focus attention on another sense,” she concluded. “Shutting out the visual input leaves more mental resources to focus on other aspects of our experience.”
Makes sense!