Romantic kissing is a cultural universal, right? Nope! At least not if you are to believe Jankowiak et al. (2015) who surveyed a large number of cultures and found that “sexual-romantic kissing” occurred in far from all of them. For some reasons the paper didn’t include a world map with these kissers and non-kissers plotted out. So, with the help of my colleague Andrey Anikin I’ve now made such a map using R and the excellent leaflet package. Click on the image below to check it out:

References

Jankowiak, W.R., Volsche, S.L. & Garcia, J.R., 2015. Is the Romantic-Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal? American Anthropologist, 117(3), 535-539. doi: 10.1111/aman.12286 pdf