Women are definitely using kissing to make an assessment about the male. If he's a bad kisser, then she's not going to want to have sex with him. She's getting a lot of information from that kiss," she said.
Men were also more likely to expect kissing to lead to sex. Men assumed that would be the case about half the time; women only about one-third of the time. And it made no difference to men if they were in a short- or long-term relationship.
"Men tend to think kissing should lead to sex no matter what," Hughes said.
That fits with other research, said Beverly Palmer of California State University, that has found that men and women often interpret nonverbal cues differently.
"When the woman is first kissing the man, she's not necessarily sending the signal, 'Let's go to the next stage' -- but the man is reading it that way," Palmer said. "So both can get themselves into difficulties if they don't verbalize their true intentions."