October 24, 2019 • 44 mins
A leader in the psychology of human mating, and an expert on both the cultural and biological foundations of love, Helen Fisher shares science-backed information on attraction, mate selection, infidelity, the neuroscience of love and the effects of culture on our biology. There’s a wealth of interesting facts here and some surprising insight into humanity’s quest for romance. We LOVED this episode!
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Just
(00:35):
a quick note that today's episode is going to be
a rerun the next season of the Psychology Podcast we'll
begin later this year. I haven't taken any break in
five years of doing this podcast, so I thought it
was about time to take a step back and think
about how it can make this a better experience for
you all. Until then, enjoy these episodes from our archives.
Today we have Helen Fisher on the show. Helen is
(00:58):
a research associate in the Department of anthrop Apology at
Rutgers University and his chief scientific director to the online
matchmaking site match dot com. She has written many best
selling books, including Anatomy of Love and Why We Love.
Thank you so much for green to talk to me today, Helen.
I'm delighted you know I'm a longtime fan of your work.
(01:18):
Thank you and colleague. And you know you wrote the
forward to the Mating Intelligence book that I wrote with Glenn,
and we were so giddy when you agree to write that.
You know you should have seen us behind the scenes.
We're like little Teene boys. We both have a cross
on you. So so when we start by asking why
(01:38):
you or how you got interested in studying the science
of love? Were you fascinated with love as a phenomenon
as a child? I, looking back on it, I think
it stems from the fact that I'm an identical twin.
And you know, as a child, when you're an identical twin,
everybody asks you, do you like the same food? Do
you do you have the same friends? Do you have
(01:58):
the same captain you? So long before I knew there
was something called the nature nurture controversy, the nature nurture argument,
I was very busy measuring how much my own behavior
was biological and how much of it was cultural. And
so then I got into graduate school, and at that time,
of course, nobody believed that there was any biology to behavior.
So that was I remember having to want some answer
(02:21):
incorrectly on an exam, I was supposed to say that
there was no biology to behavior, and of course I
said that even though I was an identical twin and
I knew perfectly well that there was. But anyway, I
think that I finally came to thinking that if there
was any part of our behavior that would have biological
orient origins, it would be behavior linked with sex and love.
(02:42):
Because as you and I both know, as Darwin said,
you know, if you have four children and I have
no children, you live on and I die out. So
the game of love matters. It matters to your heritage,
to your past, to setting your DNA on, and to tomorrow.
So I figured there's got to be some biology to
these basic reproductive behaviors. And so I really started first
(03:05):
with the question, you know, why do we bother the
form pair bonds? I mean, ninety seven percent of mammals
do not pair up to really young and people do.
Why do we do this? So I started with that,
and then I moved into well, okay, we formed these
pair bonds, and I'd written a book on it, Anatomie Love.
And then I said, well, why do we divorce? Why
don't we why don't we go back and do it
(03:27):
all over again. You know, Samuel Johnson once said, you know,
he called remarriage the triumph of hope over experience, and indeed,
you know that's what we do. So that led me
into these basic brain systems. And then one night I
was walking through a Greenwich village in New York by myself,
and it's so occurred to me. Could we have evolved
(03:48):
three distinctly different brain systems from mating and reproduction that
would orchestrate all of our falling in love, marrying, adultery, divorce,
et cetera. And I begin, maybe we've evolved three distinctly
different brain systems that evolve from maybe the man reproduction,
sex drive being one, feelings of intense dramatic love being
the second, and feelings of deep attachment being the third.
(04:10):
So then I thought to my said, well, maybe I
should people put people in brain scanners. I mean, brain
scanning was just beginning in the in the mid nineties,
and I thought, I said, well, maybe I could see
the brain pathways to these different brain systems and then
come to understand the evolution of them. So it was
a sort of a long slow growth. Wow. Wow, Well
(04:32):
did you I mean, did you ever have any like
personal experiences in love where you're like I have to understand,
like what just happened there? Like, well, you know how
personal is this? Everybody would like to think that somebody
like me has a very personal thing. I mean, I've
fallen in love many times. Human you're human, yeah, I mean,
(04:54):
I've been single almost all my life, but I've certainly
lived with several men, had five long and very powerful
love affairs and deep attachments to them. But you know,
I'm not a psychologist. I'm an anthropologist. I really am
interested in the evolution of these things. I must say.
You know, I'm now studying personality, as I'm sure you know,
(05:15):
and one personality style is think with the dopamine system,
and these people tend to be curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic.
And I've read something recently that they also not very
interested in who they are. They look out, not in
And that's pretty much what I've done in my life.
I'm not terribly interested in who Helen Fisher is. And
I don't really see any I mean, isn't every teenager
(05:37):
interested in sex and love and marriage and courtship. I mean,
I don't think I was any different. I had lots
of love affairs, but I think the reason I chose
to go into this field is an intellectual one that
in fact, these love makes the world go around. I
mean it really does. So it's a powerful part of
(05:59):
life in every single culture in the world, and it
had to live evolved, and that's what interested me. So
why do you think they call it falling in love?
Why is that the expression? And I think you're actually
euroscience research probably is consistent with that phrasing, right, you know, rand,
a glove is like a sleeping cat. It can be
awakened at any second. Attachment that other brain system is
(06:22):
it grows much more slowly, and I think that's the
concept is falling because it is so helpless. You know.
Stendall once said love is like a fever. It comes
and goes quite independently of the will, and indeed it does.
I mean boom, you can you can see I felt
it in this second, you know. I mean one more
I'll member with one man. You know, I just made
(06:43):
love to him, actually, and I sat at the edge
of the bed and I said, I just fell in
love with you. And I remained in love with him
for over fifteen years. So it's a brain system and
it can be triggered at any time. And I think
that's where the falling. You know, you don't climb into it,
you don't need mean to climb into it. Often you
trip over it and fall into it. I think that's
(07:06):
very true based on my experience as well. But when
you say you just made in love with him, do
you mean like just before this podcast? No? No, no no,
no no no, before I fell madly in love with
oh got you're saying at that time, and you just
I want to clarify that. I want to clarify that,
like just before the psychology podcast just got back up? Okay,
(07:28):
so you know, I'll try to You've done You've done great,
remarkable research looking showing why some people fall in love
with others and the critical factors. Would you mind just
telling the listeners some of those critical factors that have
been shown to robustly influence attraction and love. Great And
you know this was very hard for me. I mean
(07:49):
I've worked on it for over fifteen years. What's interesting
about it is I thought that the hardest thing I
would do with my life is get people who were
madly in love into a brain scanner and study the
brain circuitry of it. It's actually that's knowing new is
complicated as why you choose one person rather than another.
And as you know, I wrote a book on it
called Why Him? Why Her? And there's all kinds of
psychological reasons why somebody falls in love with one person
(08:12):
rather than another. I mean, we tend to fall in
love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same general
level of intelligence, the same level of good looks, same interest,
same social and political and not political, social and religious values.
There's many cultural reasons that you fall in love with
one person rather than another. Another is what people call
your love map. As a small child. We grow up
(08:34):
and we have a lot of experiences that make us
like this kind of person rather than that. But you know,
you can walk into a room, Scott, and every person
in that room is from your background, same general level
of intelligence, same general level of good looks, same basic
kind of childhood, and you don't fall in love with
all of them. So I began to think to myself, well,
(08:55):
maybe chemistry, basic body chemistry, can be involved. I mean,
wouldn't natural selection be pretty shoddy if we hadn't developed
any patterns to make choice that would have been adapted
millions of years ago. So I began to look at brain,
any trade at all linked with any brain system, And
(09:16):
as it turns out, there's all kinds of brain systems,
but most of them keep the eyes blinking, to the heartbreating,
they're not linked with personality traits. So anyway, four brain
systems are linked with personality traits, the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone,
and estrogen systems. And I began to think to myself,
maybe I can make a questionnaire to see to what
degree you express the traits linked with each of these
(09:40):
four basic brain systems, and then watch on this dating
site chemistry dot com, a subsidiary tomatch dot com, and
see if anybody is naturally drawn to certain types. And
as it turns out, there are patterns to culture, there's
patterns to nature, there's patterns to personality, and there's biological
patterns to me choice. And here's what I found. People
(10:03):
who are very expressive of the dopamine system tend to
be as I mentioned, novelties seeking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic, mentally, flexible,
and me that's you can't you subscribe me? And me too?
I don't mean pumping out of the kazoos. There's no
question about it. I knew that whatever that means what
(10:24):
I just said, Yeah, you know what I mean. You
know what I mean, exactly what you mean. And they're
drawn to people like themselves. Curious, creative people want people
like themselves. The second the people are very traditional people,
very expressive of the traits LinkedIn the serotonin system. They
are traditional, conventional, follow the rules, respect authority, tend to
(10:45):
be religious standard religiosity is in the serotonin system. They
tend to be concrete and literal. They like schedules and plans,
and and they're drawn to people like themselves. Traditional is
drawn to traditional. In the third and fourth two categories,
it's the reverse the opposites. The track people are very
(11:05):
high testosterone, somebody like Steve Jobs. It's very drawn to
somebody who's very high estrogen. High testosterone people tend to
be analytical, logical, direct, decisive, good at things like math
or engineering, or mechanics or computers or music. They tend
to be skeptical, a very assertive, like to debate, and
(11:29):
they fall really for their opposite, the high estrogen type.
The high estrogen type tends to be very imaginative, sees
the big picture, quite intuitive, good verbal in people's skills, empathetic, trusting,
and emotionally expressive. And in fact, the high estrogen goes
for the high testosterone too. And an amusing current example
(11:49):
of that would be Hillary and Bill Clinton. Hillary, because
I think she's the high testosterone. I was going to
say that. I was to say, like my Retcher and
Bill is he has certainly has a lot of testosteroneum,
but he also has a lot of high estrogen. I mean,
he cries easily. He's the one that cried at the
daughter's wedding. He's a synthesizing a thinker. The whole world knows.
(12:15):
He can't stop talking. He's very verbally skilled, he's emotionally skilled.
He's good with people. Uh. And so you know, as
a matter of fact, you know, Americans wonder when we're
going to have our first president. We've had our first
president with Bill Clinton, I mean first female president. Oh
my gosh, I'm gonna quote you on that. I love that.
(12:38):
I even think Abraham Lincoln was very high estrogen, very
skilled with words, very empathetic, very compassionate, very contextual thinker,
wanted a consensus, had a hard time making important decisions.
Uh yeah, So now of course we're all a combination
of all of them. So you, Scott, are probably dopamine
(13:01):
and what testosterone? Well, I think that. When I'm hearing
you describe all these things, I'm like, that's me, that's me.
That's me. So I don't know what to do now.
I feel like, you know, I can cry on a
dying but I can also you know, I probably have
too much distoficer and I probably have too much dopamine
as well. What do you saying? Are you good at math? Okay,
(13:22):
so here's the thing I'm not good at. I'm not
good at visual spatial reasoning. Actually, okay, I'm not very good.
Are you tough minded? I do think so? I do
think so. Yeah. The taste system breaks down into two
mathematically almost immed it into two subtypes. I think very
characteristic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Steve Jobs is
(13:43):
a very tough minded guy, really big time tough minded.
He was not visually spatially skilled. He was not in
his basement programming. He's not a programmer. Okay, good, so
we can separate that because no, I'm really not very
good at uh. In fact, on my Q tests, my
my distinction between my verbal my nonverbals IQ scores is
(14:04):
like dramatic. Yeah, same with me. You maybe be high
dopamine and high estrogen, which is a wonderful thing for
a woman to be with the man who's because they
can actually notice when you're crying, you know that sort
of thing. Well, so that's very interesting because you know,
you something I'm not those I'm not like sometimes I
try to be like the bad boy, but it's really
not part of my biology and I realize that. But
(14:26):
you look at like, you know this question of like
why are bad boys attractive? But you often see a
lot of bad boys, you know with the really nurturing women,
you know, like they're really like the nursing types, you know,
who want to kind of change them or help them.
And I think there's something going on there with this
theory of yours as well. Why the opposite a tract
there with tesosterone and estrogen, you know, like maybe there
(14:47):
is something going on there with like the attraction between
the bad boy and the caring nurturing female need each other.
I mean, the high testosterone type is not very skilled
with people. They don't have verbal and people's where's the
high estrogen type does? They're going to have very good conversations.
High testosterone type has a very deep, narrow understanding. I mean,
(15:09):
they'll know all about I don't know, the Civil War,
they'll know all about electronics, they'll know all about neuroscience,
but they won't read widely and generally Where's the high
estrogen probably knows somewhat less about an awful lot more.
And they can have very good conversations. And of course
the high testosterone tends to be tough minded. Where's the
(15:29):
high estrogen is? It's very tender hearted. In many ways,
they're complementary. In fact, I think these four broad styles
of made choice evolved. I think the high testosterone and
the high estrogen have very different qualities that it was
very adaptive for them to combine those qualities to raise
(15:51):
their babies. I think a different strategy would be the
two high traditional types, the high serotonin type. They're going
to have a very solid relationship they mean the rest
of their lives. Because everybody has got the right way
to do something, and if you don't do it the
right way, you're going to bicker about it. But in me,
I mean, they're gonna have very strong values. The fact,
(16:13):
that's the word they use all the time. They're going
to have Uh, so they're going to run a sort
of a strict ship. And perhaps you know, I have
lots of babies that grow up to have really good values.
So that's another alternative mating strategy, which is adaptive. My
question was always why about why about you and me?
I mean, we're going to find people who are very
(16:34):
hygd dopamine like ourselves, who are going to like novelty,
are gonna like excitement, are gonna like, are going maybe
more prone to be promiscuous, more charismatic. They're going to
attract people to you know, who might offer promisecuity. So
why would they Why would that pattern have evolved to
(16:55):
hyd dopamine types seeking each other out? And my only hypothesis,
and anybody else can have one, certainly, is that they
may be more likely to have a whole series of partnerships.
And with a series of partnerships, you're going to have
babies by more than one person and create more genetic
variety in your lineage. So I think we've basically about
(17:15):
three foundly basic styles of made choice. One that creates
a lot more babies and different partners, the traditional second
type that creates a lot of babies with one partner
with strict values, and the third type of measures really
interesting variations to create a lot of variety and they're young.
I love this. That's a really good point. So I
think that we can distinguish between the drive for the
(17:38):
for a variety of novelty which you get from dopamine,
and the those who have a tendency to cheat. And
I think it's more the testosterone. Maybe it's both, but
maybe like a combination of like maybe testosterone and dope
makes it more likely to be promiscuits and cheat. But
you know, you've done a lot of research on why
(17:59):
we cheat and the reasons. Why could you maybe give
people some teasers on that? Yeah, it's interesting. You know.
On my website I did a meta analysis in which
I listed all of the reasons why people cheat, so
somebody could go to Helen Fisher dot com and get
all of them. I'll put that on the show notes.
By the way, well, that would be great. I think
(18:19):
it's called infidelity, Who, when, Where? Why? I'm not first
author as a graduate student, but anyway, bottom line is
there's many cultural reasons why people cheat. I mean, if
you ask somebody why they've cheated, they'll say, you know, well,
I wanted to get caught and patch up the marriage.
I wanted to get caught and break up the marriage.
(18:40):
I wanted to supplement the marriage. I get lonely when
my partner goes out of town. I want to solve
a sex problem. I want to walk a walk on
the wild side. I want to be admired by somebody
who If you ask people around the world, there's so
many cultural reasons. But one of them interesting thing to
(19:01):
me was a study in the nineteen eighties in which
they asked, you know why you were adulterous, et cetera.
And as it turns out, fifty six percent of men
in that study and thirty four percent of women in
that study said they were in extremely happy marriages. They
weren't being adulters because of a problem in the relationship,
(19:23):
because of various cultural opportunities, because of the bad child,
but they just they were in happy marriages and they
did it anyway. And that's what's so interesting to me.
Because I've looked at adultery in over forty cultures. You
find it in every single one, even where you can
get your head chopped off for it. There's got to
be some evolutionary payoffs for this. I'm not suggesting adultery,
but to understand it as a scientist. So I mean,
(19:47):
we know some of the biology that contributes to adultery.
There's a wonderful study that came out of Sweden and
a few years ago which they found a gene in
the vasa pressing system and men who had two copies
of that gene had the most unstable marriages. They weren't doors,
but they had the most unstable marriages. Men with only
one copy of that gene in the vase of present
(20:08):
system had more stable marriages, and men with no copies
of that gene had the most stable marriages. So we're
beginning to understand a little about that. And of course,
with these three different brain systems that I talk about,
sex drive, feelings of intense romantic love, and the feelings
of attachment, they're not always well connected. You know, you
can feel deep attachment to a long term privor and
then swing wildly into feelings of romantic love for somebody else,
(20:32):
and then suddenly feel the sex drive for somebody in
the officer, even on the street. So bottom line is
brain architecture enables us to love more than one person
at a time, and we're beginning to find some of
the physiology connected with it too. So what would be
the payoffs of this? And of course, as you know,
you and I and everybody else in our field have
been discussing this forever. But I don't buy the party line.
(20:54):
The party line is that men are more adotors than
women because they have they can spread more seed every
time they have an extra sexual event, they can have
a baby and spread more DNA, So that's adapted. Sure,
I can buy that. But then they go on in
this argument to say, well, you know, women can't have
a child each time that they have sex with a
(21:15):
new partner, so it's to their advantage to hold on
to the partner that they've got. Well, I don't think so.
First of all, who are all these men sleeping with?
Now this is a basic math issue. Excuse it. Either,
there's an awful lot of women who are faithful and
a few women who are sleeping with everybody. Let's go
back in a million years. Is it man and a
woman they're walking along in a little hunting and gathering group,
(21:37):
and occasionally she slips over the hill and has sex
with somebody else. But what is she getting. She may
have one more baby that might be nice, but I
mean from a Darwinian perspective, more genetic variety, and they're young.
But the bottom line is if her current partner dies
or deserts her, she may have an insurance policy somebody
(21:58):
who uh will step in and help her out, and
she will certainly get extra resources. I mean, men around
the world give their adulterous partners everything from beer and
food and vacations and money and forms of stability. And
I think that that that could have had real payoffs
(22:20):
for women for many, many millions of years, hence leaving
this tendency not only in men but in women to
be the otherest. It has payoffs for both sexes. It
makes a lot of sense. And also, you know, I
just think of how unnatural monogamy or how you know,
how much that's really asking a species to have these
(22:42):
three different drives all coalesced in one person and to
be and just like for that to be optimally satisfying. Yeah,
it just seems like a hard thing to ask out
of humans. I think monogamy is natural. I think adultery
is natural too well. To basic evolutionary side people means
a pair bond. You can have a pair bond and
(23:03):
not be sexually faithful to that pair. You can be
socially faithful to that pair. But then that's why, as
you know that we call it social monogamy. I mean,
you know, there's two people living in a house and
they've got children, and they go to work, and they
behave like a pair bonded animals and are but if
they both speak around on the side, they're adulters as well.
So when you really look around the world at all
(23:26):
of the basic variations in reproductive strategy, do you would
and unlessen you went and counted heads, how many people
are living in that hut, in that tepee, in that igo,
in that appointment building, in that home. It's generally true
almost everywhere in the world. We are an animal that
forms pair bond. We are also adulterous. We are both.
We are an animal that has what I call a
(23:49):
dual human reproductive strategy, a tremendous drive to pair up
and rear our children as a team, and also a
tendency for adultery. Divorce and rema marriage and then with
their large brain, with their cognitive processes, we make decisions
about our lives. I mean, you know, and I think
some people make their decisions more easily than others. It
(24:11):
is my guess that certain personality styles have an easier
time with with with being faithful to a partner. Yeah,
I mean that's good. Segue into the brain research on
love that shows that your decision ais the brain kind
of the blood full goes away. Yeah, it kind of
shuts down, right, Yeah, when you fall in love, but
basic brain regions in the prefrontal cortex linked with decision
(24:35):
making begin to begin to Yeah, the flood the blood
flows out, just like you said, And you're very poor
at making decisions. I mean, you see somebody who's in love,
and you know she'll say to you or he'll say
to you, Oh, this purven is, this person is proven
for me. It doesn't matter that she's married, that she
has got ten children, that she's got three heads. We'll
get through that. Well, we'll have a fetish for three heads.
(25:00):
I bet there's a fetish for everything, right, probably, Well,
where do fetishes come in? Sorry, my mind just goes
makes associations all over the place. Where where does that
adapt it? What's the adaptive value of like liking to
suck toes? For instance? Oh? Boy, well, I don't study fetishes,
but apparently men I have any more than women do. Uh?
(25:20):
And what I recall? And you might know more about
this than I do. I would get you a guess
that you do that. Why would you guess I would?
Because you've written on this. Oh yes, I've written on
a lot of scientifically scientifically exactly, No, I didn't figure.
I don't know, are you in I'm not really no,
(25:42):
neither of my But anyway, you know, it's it's very
valuable for men to pick up on any possible chance
for sex. I mean, the women is the custodian of
the egg. We own the egg. You've got to seminate
that egg. And if you miss an opportunity to inceminate
(26:04):
that egg, you may miss an opportunity to spread your
DNA on into tomorrow. So is there really important though,
like like who you sleep with, Like isn't there a
great value like of making sure that it's going to
be good genes like as supposed to just having sex indiscriminately,
like couldn't there be a good case to be made
why it's not good to have sex even though if
(26:25):
you're a guy, to not have it indiscriminately, well, if
you can then walk out and never see the child
or mother again and there's no you know, there's no
reproductive fallout on you, you you know, I mean, I think
that's what most scientists are talking about, the fact that,
you know, in relatively indiscriminate sex on the part of man,
(26:46):
if it has no well, if they don't get a
sex disease, of course, I mean, you know, and they
don't spend a lot of metabolic energy on it, of course,
and if they don't get shamed from the culture for it,
what they've got to lose. But the bottom line is
men are much more fetishist than women are. And the classic,
(27:07):
the classic hypothesis has been that they are more interested
in sucking toes and other kinds of fetishes because sometime
in their past, sucking toes or whatever it was was
linked with some sort of sexual opportunity, and so they
have now gotten into their brain that these things are
connected and that toasucking is going to lead to sexual opportunity,
(27:28):
and unconsciously, of course, leads to reproduction, so women are
far less uh, be leaguered by by fetishes. I think
there are just as many women that go to furry
conventions as men. But maybe that's a whole different thing.
What kind of conventions furry conventions where they dress up
(27:50):
as you know, animals conventions. Yeah, they're called furry conventions.
I'll put that in my show notes. Yeah, it's a
fascinating subculture. It's a fascinating subculture, says a little bit
like Halloween. Halloween where you could just be somebody else. Maybe.
I mean, I saw this TV special of all these
different kind of fetishes that some people have balloon fetishes,
you know, and and maybe you're right, maybe at some
(28:12):
point in their life, like the balloon preceded a sexual
opportunity or something and they got imprinted or something. But right,
it's just fascinating the human variation, you know, it's so fascinating.
Human variation is fascinating. But I've always been interested in
I've been really dedicated my life to why we're all
alike instead of why we're all different. And here's where
(28:33):
feelings of romantic love, feelings of attachment, the sex drive
we really all carry that those around in our head.
How we express them is very different from one person
to another and one culture to the next, but the
actual feelings are pretty much the same. Yeah, you've basically
you've You've said at some point you said, as long
as humans survive, these three drives will survive. I think
(28:56):
it's fear system, you know, and the anger system. These
are basic survival mechanism. Is a matter of fact, feelings
of intense romantic love emanated from this reward system, the
brain system for wanting, for craving, for session, for focus,
and for motivation. And that system really starts in a
(29:17):
tiny little factory wane in the basement of the mind,
in the ventral tech metal area, and that little brain
region that really generates the dopamains to give you that
feeling of romantic love. That little factory lies right next
to the factories that orchestrate hunger and thirst. This is
a survival mechanism. We know it from looking at the brain.
(29:38):
So it seems like, you know, because dopamine is all
about the wanting System's not about the liking system, right,
opiates and all that stuff that's liking. But so we
can like, you know, doping signals possibility of a reward,
but doesn't guarantee that we'll actually enjoy the reward and
once we obtain it. So would you say that, like
(30:00):
the attachment system might be the only out of the
three that's that's more sossociated with the liking. Wow, that's
a wonderful question. You can feel deeply attached to somebody
who don't like you can feel deeply attached to somebody
you know, maybe all the good point So maybe it's
independent of all three, Like all three can either you know,
(30:21):
only stay in the in the in the wanting system,
but it could also you can also like it, you know.
I bet there's lots of people who have lost for
for people that they actually can't stand. I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, certainly you could be in love with somebody
who doesn't share your values, your background, your interest. I
(30:42):
mean I remember reading a quote recently, you know, by
a man who said, you know, I am so I
am totally in love with a woman in the office
or name is Emily, although I know that we have
no chance of ever spending a life together. She is
an obsession, you know. Oh, yes, So the obsession thing
is interesting because now the obsessions happened when it's people
(31:05):
we shouldn't like. Yeah, yeah, and we obsession can be
for somebody you really do like to. But you know,
the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of
love is indifference. And when you're feeling attachment, that's not indifferent.
Sex drive is not in different and romantic love is
not indifferent. The emotions can swing from hate to anger,
(31:27):
to jealousy, to rage, to curiosity to intimacy, but they're
not indifferent. I like that a lot. So we talk
a lot of in society use the phrase animal attraction. Yeah,
I mean, are we all animals? Like? You know? So
all these systems, even love, could be considered animal attraction
(31:49):
as well in a way, right. Oh you know. I've
written five books and my very favorite chapter is in
my fourth book called Why We Love, and it's the
second chapter on animal magnetism. And that the way it Oh,
thank you, thank you, thank you. So I I maintain
(32:10):
that the basic animal attraction is romantic love. You know,
when you look at prairie bowls, like a little field
mouse little prairie bowl, and you look at the males
when he is suddenly attracted to a female the amount
of activity in the dopamine system increases by fifty percent.
So these animals are feeling the wanting when they look
(32:32):
at that individual. Now they're not writing poems, they're not
singing songs, they're not building castles to a partner, but
they're feeling that feeling of attraction. And it is that
feeling of attraction that you and I have come with
our big cerebral cortex to call romantic love. And when
you take a look at everything from elephants to to oh,
(32:54):
there was one quote that I found from black rhinos
and it was a female black rhino. This is from
an ethologist, you know, describing rhino black rhino behavior. And
the female was just standing there looking at the male,
and the male was parading in front of her, and
he was marching back and forth, and he was pulling
up bushes and trussing them in the air and swizzling
(33:16):
his little swinging his little tail around. And then I
remember the quote looking for all the world as if
he were dancing. And you see this throughout the animal community,
and even among birds. You see jealousy among birds too,
and certainly anger and fear, etc. So I think that
romantic love is a basic brain system that evolved along
(33:38):
with the fear system, the anger system, and many other
brain systems, but one of the basic survival mechanisms in
all mammals that drive us to choose one individual rather
than another. So what's more irrational or crazy? Love or lust? Well,
I'll only say this, and you go and you ask
(33:59):
somebody to go to better with you and they say no,
thank you. You don't kill yourself. Some males, you know,
do go crazy over that, but yeah, you go crazy.
But that people in the crimes of passion around the
world are not from the sex drive because they walked
into their own bedroom and with another man, that kind
(34:20):
of thing. So I feel like there might be a
sex difference in that. You know, for men, maybe getting
rejected sexually might be like worse a feeling than being
rejected romantically, whereas maybe the reverse is true for women.
Do you think that's possible. I actually think it's the reverse.
The data show that men are two and a half
times my lifely to kill themselves when a romantic relationship
(34:43):
is over. Yeah, oh yeah, And it's been in books
for a long time by psychologists. Elaine Hatfield wrote about it.
You know, I do this annual study with Match dot
Com called Singles in America, and we don't pull the
match population. We pull the American population, and so it's
based on the US since it's a representative sample. We
got the right neurow blacks, whites, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, oral, suburban, urban,
(35:07):
every part of the country, every age group, et cetera.
And I've always you know, we have been busting myths
about women for fifty years. I'd like to bust some
of these myths about men. And one we find this
over every single year we find this, Men fall in
love more often, they fall in love a lot faster
because they're so visual. When they do fall in love,
(35:27):
they want to introduce the women to friends and families sooner,
They want to move in sooner. Men have more intimate
conversations with their wives than women do with their husbands.
Because women have their intimate conversations with their girlfriends and
or two and a half times more likely, it kills
themselves when the relationship is over. So you know, women
(35:47):
are the sticky sex. They're the what secks, picky, picky sex.
So I mean, this is so interesting because you know,
people have so many of these stereotypes and these preconceptions
in their head. You know, let's talk about the hookups,
the hookup culture which has become very prominent in college campuses,
which are mutual friend Justin Garcia. Do you still talk
to Justin? Oh? I spoke to him yesterday. Oh that's
(36:10):
so cool. Yeah, I know, I know he thinks very
highly of you. Yeah. You know. He's done some interesting
research showing that a hookup is never really just a
casual hookup, that most men and women, you know, boys
and girls in college campuses really do have some sort
of thing in the back of the head they hope
that they hope it kind of turns into something. You know.
(36:31):
His original study in Binghamton University, apparently fifty of both
men and women, when asked why they went into a hookup,
said that they were hoping to create a romantic relationship.
And with our Singles in America study, we did this
same thing, and of course this was a national study
of a much larger and more varied group, and I
(36:55):
can't remember, I guess about fifteen to twenty percent wanted
to get to know the person better. What's interesting is
then I asked the question, have you ever had a
hookup or a one night stand that turned into a
long term partnership. And every year I ask it, over
thirty five percent say they've had that experience. And I think,
(37:16):
just like what you said, you know, casual sex is
not casual unless you're so drunk you can't remember who
it was. It happened in the brain. I mean, it
triggers five of the ten cranial alerts. You really see them,
smell them, hear them, taste them, and touch them. I mean,
you know, and you know, any stimulation of the genitals
can drive up the dopamine system and push you over
(37:36):
the threshold. And tell me about it, Tell me about it.
Oh yeah, well that's what happened to me. And of
course with orgasm there's a real flood of oxytocin and
vasi present and you can get real feelings of attachment
to the person too. So casual sex is not casual.
And I you know I've often said to people is
that you know, there's two ways to get the boy
or the girl. Either you spend months discussing their college
(38:00):
or you get them into bed tonight and trigger these
brain circuits for romantic love and attachment. And in many respects.
I think this book up culture is actually, oddly enough,
oddly enough, I think it's part of something that I
call slow love. I've come to believe that I've been
thinking to myself and you as a as a as
(38:21):
a scientist also, I mean, what is all this casual
sex about? Is it casual? What's going on here? I mean,
it's a lot of metabolic energy. When you have sex
with somebody, You're spending your time, You're spending your energy.
You get your feelings hurt, you can get sex diseases,
women can get pregnant. There's probab of just some reason
for this. And so I've come to believe we are
(38:42):
in an age of what I call slow love, fast sex,
slow love. And it comes from a lot of studies
that I've done, but one of them was a particular
point particularly pointed to me. Apparently sixty seven percent of
Americans are who are living with somebody are terrified of divorce,
fight of it. And so I've come to believe that
(39:02):
what we are doing now is a long pre commitment
stage before we tie the knot, you know, get to
know them person, we're having sex with them, then do
go into friends with benefits, so you see them more regularly,
but not as a couple. Then you begin to introduce
yourselves as a couple. Then you begin to live together.
Then you get a pre opt just in case not
(39:23):
marriage doesn't work. Marriage used to be the beginning of
a relationship. Now it's the finale. Yeah, you've said a
great quote. I forget wherever you said. If you don't
want to get attached to someone, you'd be better off
not just not sleeping with them. Absolutely, that there really is.
You know, it's good to consider here. You know, because
of casual sex very rarely is just casual self right,
(39:46):
And I can cut you off really fast too. It
could turn you off really fast too. You know that
stuff by Gordon Gallup and others studying kissing and they asked,
I think over a thousand people, and I think over
fifty percent it had, you know, the kiss and death.
I mean they didn't even get in bed together. Just
kissing the person one time was the end of it.
When they were beginning to pull for somebody, then the
(40:07):
person kissed him and they said, Nope, I can't do this.
So that was a deal breaker. Do their breath stink
or something to the person's breath stink or something. Maybe yeh,
his mouthful like a rhinoceros. Who's who's to know? Or
maybe he was who knows? I didn't that was in
the academic article. But we've probably all been there at
some point, you know. And yeah, all the way through courtship,
(40:32):
there's these breaking points and escalection points. That's true. Yeah,
I think something. I think both me and you are
probably fundamentally romantics. You know. I really do have this
sort of like this romantic ideal in my head about
what things should look like. Do you think there's great
value in like can that be dangerous? Like being too romantic?
(40:55):
Nobody gets out of love alive unless you don't play
the game at all. Nobody gets out of the level life.
Everybody has times of tremendous ecstasy and tremendous agony, tremendous despair.
I once there was a study years ago and they asked,
you know, if you ever been rejected in love? And
over ninety three percent of both men and women, they
(41:18):
asked the question, have you ever dumped somebody who was
really in love with you? And the next question was,
have you ever been dumped by somebody who you were
really in love with and about ninety five percent of
both men and women said yes to both. And these
people were in college. I mean they've also now they
got their twenties, thirties, forties, fifteen, sixty, seventies, and eighties
(41:40):
to get dumped again or to dump somebody. So I mean,
it's one of the most powerful brain systems the human
animal has ever evolved, and it's gonna be with us
as long as we survived. I think it's a very poetic,
beautiful phrasing. So we can we can, we can wrap
this up. But before we leave, on want to I
want to make queer like I really do believe you are.
(42:02):
You know, I've heard you talk a lot, and I
do think you're a romantic, you know, and like, even
though you study biology, what are you saying complete REMI yeah,
And you know, even though something so unique about you
and you're such a leader, you're like by far like
a leader in this field is because you you bring
in so many perspectives that most people don't bring in
and tie all together. So you don't just study the biology,
(42:24):
but you study the cultural aspect and you study contextual aspects.
I have a call here. I think that you said
to Krista Tippett in a recent interview with her. You said,
if I die tomorrow, I want people to really know
this that I believe this, that the more we know
about the brain, the body, and human evolution, the more
we will come to understand the power of culture to
(42:44):
change that biology. Biology, culture, religion are all part of humanity.
They don't threaten each other. They enhance one another. It's
got chill reasons. I'm crazy about you. It is exactly true.
I think I could say it even better than that.
You know, people are scared of biology. The more we
get to understand the biology, the more we're going to
(43:06):
come to understand the power of culture to change that biology.
They go hand in hand. Well, I say we leave
on that note because I can't think of a better
note than that. Thank you so much for having a
chat with me today. I really appreciate it great. Thank
you too. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I
(43:30):
hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react
in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add our
rading and review of the podcast on iTunes. Thanks for
being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune
(43:51):
in next season for more on the Mind, Brain, Behavior
and Creativity m
Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Just
(00:35):
a quick note that today's episode is going to be
a rerun the next season of the Psychology Podcast we'll
begin later this year. I haven't taken any break in
five years of doing this podcast, so I thought it
was about time to take a step back and think
about how it can make this a better experience for
you all. Until then, enjoy these episodes from our archives.
Today we have Helen Fisher on the show. Helen is
(00:58):
a research associate in the Department of anthrop Apology at
Rutgers University and his chief scientific director to the online
matchmaking site match dot com. She has written many best
selling books, including Anatomy of Love and Why We Love.
Thank you so much for green to talk to me today, Helen.
I'm delighted you know I'm a longtime fan of your work.
(01:18):
Thank you and colleague. And you know you wrote the
forward to the Mating Intelligence book that I wrote with Glenn,
and we were so giddy when you agree to write that.
You know you should have seen us behind the scenes.
We're like little Teene boys. We both have a cross
on you. So so when we start by asking why
(01:38):
you or how you got interested in studying the science
of love? Were you fascinated with love as a phenomenon
as a child? I, looking back on it, I think
it stems from the fact that I'm an identical twin.
And you know, as a child, when you're an identical twin,
everybody asks you, do you like the same food? Do
you do you have the same friends? Do you have
(01:58):
the same captain you? So long before I knew there
was something called the nature nurture controversy, the nature nurture argument,
I was very busy measuring how much my own behavior
was biological and how much of it was cultural. And
so then I got into graduate school, and at that time,
of course, nobody believed that there was any biology to behavior.
So that was I remember having to want some answer
(02:21):
incorrectly on an exam, I was supposed to say that
there was no biology to behavior, and of course I
said that even though I was an identical twin and
I knew perfectly well that there was. But anyway, I
think that I finally came to thinking that if there
was any part of our behavior that would have biological
orient origins, it would be behavior linked with sex and love.
(02:42):
Because as you and I both know, as Darwin said,
you know, if you have four children and I have
no children, you live on and I die out. So
the game of love matters. It matters to your heritage,
to your past, to setting your DNA on, and to tomorrow.
So I figured there's got to be some biology to
these basic reproductive behaviors. And so I really started first
(03:05):
with the question, you know, why do we bother the
form pair bonds? I mean, ninety seven percent of mammals
do not pair up to really young and people do.
Why do we do this? So I started with that,
and then I moved into well, okay, we formed these
pair bonds, and I'd written a book on it, Anatomie Love.
And then I said, well, why do we divorce? Why
don't we why don't we go back and do it
(03:27):
all over again. You know, Samuel Johnson once said, you know,
he called remarriage the triumph of hope over experience, and indeed,
you know that's what we do. So that led me
into these basic brain systems. And then one night I
was walking through a Greenwich village in New York by myself,
and it's so occurred to me. Could we have evolved
(03:48):
three distinctly different brain systems from mating and reproduction that
would orchestrate all of our falling in love, marrying, adultery, divorce,
et cetera. And I begin, maybe we've evolved three distinctly
different brain systems that evolve from maybe the man reproduction,
sex drive being one, feelings of intense dramatic love being
the second, and feelings of deep attachment being the third.
(04:10):
So then I thought to my said, well, maybe I
should people put people in brain scanners. I mean, brain
scanning was just beginning in the in the mid nineties,
and I thought, I said, well, maybe I could see
the brain pathways to these different brain systems and then
come to understand the evolution of them. So it was
a sort of a long slow growth. Wow. Wow, Well
(04:32):
did you I mean, did you ever have any like
personal experiences in love where you're like I have to understand,
like what just happened there? Like, well, you know how
personal is this? Everybody would like to think that somebody
like me has a very personal thing. I mean, I've
fallen in love many times. Human you're human, yeah, I mean,
(04:54):
I've been single almost all my life, but I've certainly
lived with several men, had five long and very powerful
love affairs and deep attachments to them. But you know,
I'm not a psychologist. I'm an anthropologist. I really am
interested in the evolution of these things. I must say.
You know, I'm now studying personality, as I'm sure you know,
(05:15):
and one personality style is think with the dopamine system,
and these people tend to be curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic.
And I've read something recently that they also not very
interested in who they are. They look out, not in
And that's pretty much what I've done in my life.
I'm not terribly interested in who Helen Fisher is. And
I don't really see any I mean, isn't every teenager
(05:37):
interested in sex and love and marriage and courtship. I mean,
I don't think I was any different. I had lots
of love affairs, but I think the reason I chose
to go into this field is an intellectual one that
in fact, these love makes the world go around. I
mean it really does. So it's a powerful part of
(05:59):
life in every single culture in the world, and it
had to live evolved, and that's what interested me. So
why do you think they call it falling in love?
Why is that the expression? And I think you're actually
euroscience research probably is consistent with that phrasing, right, you know, rand,
a glove is like a sleeping cat. It can be
awakened at any second. Attachment that other brain system is
(06:22):
it grows much more slowly, and I think that's the
concept is falling because it is so helpless. You know.
Stendall once said love is like a fever. It comes
and goes quite independently of the will, and indeed it does.
I mean boom, you can you can see I felt
it in this second, you know. I mean one more
I'll member with one man. You know, I just made
(06:43):
love to him, actually, and I sat at the edge
of the bed and I said, I just fell in
love with you. And I remained in love with him
for over fifteen years. So it's a brain system and
it can be triggered at any time. And I think
that's where the falling. You know, you don't climb into it,
you don't need mean to climb into it. Often you
trip over it and fall into it. I think that's
(07:06):
very true based on my experience as well. But when
you say you just made in love with him, do
you mean like just before this podcast? No? No, no no,
no no no, before I fell madly in love with
oh got you're saying at that time, and you just
I want to clarify that. I want to clarify that,
like just before the psychology podcast just got back up? Okay,
(07:28):
so you know, I'll try to You've done You've done great,
remarkable research looking showing why some people fall in love
with others and the critical factors. Would you mind just
telling the listeners some of those critical factors that have
been shown to robustly influence attraction and love. Great And
you know this was very hard for me. I mean
(07:49):
I've worked on it for over fifteen years. What's interesting
about it is I thought that the hardest thing I
would do with my life is get people who were
madly in love into a brain scanner and study the
brain circuitry of it. It's actually that's knowing new is
complicated as why you choose one person rather than another.
And as you know, I wrote a book on it
called Why Him? Why Her? And there's all kinds of
psychological reasons why somebody falls in love with one person
(08:12):
rather than another. I mean, we tend to fall in
love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same general
level of intelligence, the same level of good looks, same interest,
same social and political and not political, social and religious values.
There's many cultural reasons that you fall in love with
one person rather than another. Another is what people call
your love map. As a small child. We grow up
(08:34):
and we have a lot of experiences that make us
like this kind of person rather than that. But you know,
you can walk into a room, Scott, and every person
in that room is from your background, same general level
of intelligence, same general level of good looks, same basic
kind of childhood, and you don't fall in love with
all of them. So I began to think to myself, well,
(08:55):
maybe chemistry, basic body chemistry, can be involved. I mean,
wouldn't natural selection be pretty shoddy if we hadn't developed
any patterns to make choice that would have been adapted
millions of years ago. So I began to look at brain,
any trade at all linked with any brain system, And
(09:16):
as it turns out, there's all kinds of brain systems,
but most of them keep the eyes blinking, to the heartbreating,
they're not linked with personality traits. So anyway, four brain
systems are linked with personality traits, the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone,
and estrogen systems. And I began to think to myself,
maybe I can make a questionnaire to see to what
degree you express the traits linked with each of these
(09:40):
four basic brain systems, and then watch on this dating
site chemistry dot com, a subsidiary tomatch dot com, and
see if anybody is naturally drawn to certain types. And
as it turns out, there are patterns to culture, there's
patterns to nature, there's patterns to personality, and there's biological
patterns to me choice. And here's what I found. People
(10:03):
who are very expressive of the dopamine system tend to
be as I mentioned, novelties seeking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic, mentally, flexible,
and me that's you can't you subscribe me? And me too?
I don't mean pumping out of the kazoos. There's no
question about it. I knew that whatever that means what
(10:24):
I just said, Yeah, you know what I mean. You
know what I mean, exactly what you mean. And they're
drawn to people like themselves. Curious, creative people want people
like themselves. The second the people are very traditional people,
very expressive of the traits LinkedIn the serotonin system. They
are traditional, conventional, follow the rules, respect authority, tend to
(10:45):
be religious standard religiosity is in the serotonin system. They
tend to be concrete and literal. They like schedules and plans,
and and they're drawn to people like themselves. Traditional is
drawn to traditional. In the third and fourth two categories,
it's the reverse the opposites. The track people are very
(11:05):
high testosterone, somebody like Steve Jobs. It's very drawn to
somebody who's very high estrogen. High testosterone people tend to
be analytical, logical, direct, decisive, good at things like math
or engineering, or mechanics or computers or music. They tend
to be skeptical, a very assertive, like to debate, and
(11:29):
they fall really for their opposite, the high estrogen type.
The high estrogen type tends to be very imaginative, sees
the big picture, quite intuitive, good verbal in people's skills, empathetic, trusting,
and emotionally expressive. And in fact, the high estrogen goes
for the high testosterone too. And an amusing current example
(11:49):
of that would be Hillary and Bill Clinton. Hillary, because
I think she's the high testosterone. I was going to
say that. I was to say, like my Retcher and
Bill is he has certainly has a lot of testosteroneum,
but he also has a lot of high estrogen. I mean,
he cries easily. He's the one that cried at the
daughter's wedding. He's a synthesizing a thinker. The whole world knows.
(12:15):
He can't stop talking. He's very verbally skilled, he's emotionally skilled.
He's good with people. Uh. And so you know, as
a matter of fact, you know, Americans wonder when we're
going to have our first president. We've had our first
president with Bill Clinton, I mean first female president. Oh
my gosh, I'm gonna quote you on that. I love that.
(12:38):
I even think Abraham Lincoln was very high estrogen, very
skilled with words, very empathetic, very compassionate, very contextual thinker,
wanted a consensus, had a hard time making important decisions.
Uh yeah, So now of course we're all a combination
of all of them. So you, Scott, are probably dopamine
(13:01):
and what testosterone? Well, I think that. When I'm hearing
you describe all these things, I'm like, that's me, that's me.
That's me. So I don't know what to do now.
I feel like, you know, I can cry on a
dying but I can also you know, I probably have
too much distoficer and I probably have too much dopamine
as well. What do you saying? Are you good at math? Okay,
(13:22):
so here's the thing I'm not good at. I'm not
good at visual spatial reasoning. Actually, okay, I'm not very good.
Are you tough minded? I do think so? I do
think so. Yeah. The taste system breaks down into two
mathematically almost immed it into two subtypes. I think very
characteristic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Steve Jobs is
(13:43):
a very tough minded guy, really big time tough minded.
He was not visually spatially skilled. He was not in
his basement programming. He's not a programmer. Okay, good, so
we can separate that because no, I'm really not very
good at uh. In fact, on my Q tests, my
my distinction between my verbal my nonverbals IQ scores is
(14:04):
like dramatic. Yeah, same with me. You maybe be high
dopamine and high estrogen, which is a wonderful thing for
a woman to be with the man who's because they
can actually notice when you're crying, you know that sort
of thing. Well, so that's very interesting because you know,
you something I'm not those I'm not like sometimes I
try to be like the bad boy, but it's really
not part of my biology and I realize that. But
(14:26):
you look at like, you know this question of like
why are bad boys attractive? But you often see a
lot of bad boys, you know with the really nurturing women,
you know, like they're really like the nursing types, you know,
who want to kind of change them or help them.
And I think there's something going on there with this
theory of yours as well. Why the opposite a tract
there with tesosterone and estrogen, you know, like maybe there
(14:47):
is something going on there with like the attraction between
the bad boy and the caring nurturing female need each other.
I mean, the high testosterone type is not very skilled
with people. They don't have verbal and people's where's the
high estrogen type does? They're going to have very good conversations.
High testosterone type has a very deep, narrow understanding. I mean,
(15:09):
they'll know all about I don't know, the Civil War,
they'll know all about electronics, they'll know all about neuroscience,
but they won't read widely and generally Where's the high
estrogen probably knows somewhat less about an awful lot more.
And they can have very good conversations. And of course
the high testosterone tends to be tough minded. Where's the
(15:29):
high estrogen is? It's very tender hearted. In many ways,
they're complementary. In fact, I think these four broad styles
of made choice evolved. I think the high testosterone and
the high estrogen have very different qualities that it was
very adaptive for them to combine those qualities to raise
(15:51):
their babies. I think a different strategy would be the
two high traditional types, the high serotonin type. They're going
to have a very solid relationship they mean the rest
of their lives. Because everybody has got the right way
to do something, and if you don't do it the
right way, you're going to bicker about it. But in me,
I mean, they're gonna have very strong values. The fact,
(16:13):
that's the word they use all the time. They're going
to have Uh, so they're going to run a sort
of a strict ship. And perhaps you know, I have
lots of babies that grow up to have really good values.
So that's another alternative mating strategy, which is adaptive. My
question was always why about why about you and me?
I mean, we're going to find people who are very
(16:34):
hygd dopamine like ourselves, who are going to like novelty,
are gonna like excitement, are gonna like, are going maybe
more prone to be promiscuous, more charismatic. They're going to
attract people to you know, who might offer promisecuity. So
why would they Why would that pattern have evolved to
(16:55):
hyd dopamine types seeking each other out? And my only hypothesis,
and anybody else can have one, certainly, is that they
may be more likely to have a whole series of partnerships.
And with a series of partnerships, you're going to have
babies by more than one person and create more genetic
variety in your lineage. So I think we've basically about
(17:15):
three foundly basic styles of made choice. One that creates
a lot more babies and different partners, the traditional second
type that creates a lot of babies with one partner
with strict values, and the third type of measures really
interesting variations to create a lot of variety and they're young.
I love this. That's a really good point. So I
think that we can distinguish between the drive for the
(17:38):
for a variety of novelty which you get from dopamine,
and the those who have a tendency to cheat. And
I think it's more the testosterone. Maybe it's both, but
maybe like a combination of like maybe testosterone and dope
makes it more likely to be promiscuits and cheat. But
you know, you've done a lot of research on why
(17:59):
we cheat and the reasons. Why could you maybe give
people some teasers on that? Yeah, it's interesting. You know.
On my website I did a meta analysis in which
I listed all of the reasons why people cheat, so
somebody could go to Helen Fisher dot com and get
all of them. I'll put that on the show notes.
By the way, well, that would be great. I think
(18:19):
it's called infidelity, Who, when, Where? Why? I'm not first
author as a graduate student, but anyway, bottom line is
there's many cultural reasons why people cheat. I mean, if
you ask somebody why they've cheated, they'll say, you know, well,
I wanted to get caught and patch up the marriage.
I wanted to get caught and break up the marriage.
(18:40):
I wanted to supplement the marriage. I get lonely when
my partner goes out of town. I want to solve
a sex problem. I want to walk a walk on
the wild side. I want to be admired by somebody
who If you ask people around the world, there's so
many cultural reasons. But one of them interesting thing to
(19:01):
me was a study in the nineteen eighties in which
they asked, you know why you were adulterous, et cetera.
And as it turns out, fifty six percent of men
in that study and thirty four percent of women in
that study said they were in extremely happy marriages. They
weren't being adulters because of a problem in the relationship,
(19:23):
because of various cultural opportunities, because of the bad child,
but they just they were in happy marriages and they
did it anyway. And that's what's so interesting to me.
Because I've looked at adultery in over forty cultures. You
find it in every single one, even where you can
get your head chopped off for it. There's got to
be some evolutionary payoffs for this. I'm not suggesting adultery,
but to understand it as a scientist. So I mean,
(19:47):
we know some of the biology that contributes to adultery.
There's a wonderful study that came out of Sweden and
a few years ago which they found a gene in
the vasa pressing system and men who had two copies
of that gene had the most unstable marriages. They weren't doors,
but they had the most unstable marriages. Men with only
one copy of that gene in the vase of present
(20:08):
system had more stable marriages, and men with no copies
of that gene had the most stable marriages. So we're
beginning to understand a little about that. And of course,
with these three different brain systems that I talk about,
sex drive, feelings of intense romantic love, and the feelings
of attachment, they're not always well connected. You know, you
can feel deep attachment to a long term privor and
then swing wildly into feelings of romantic love for somebody else,
(20:32):
and then suddenly feel the sex drive for somebody in
the officer, even on the street. So bottom line is
brain architecture enables us to love more than one person
at a time, and we're beginning to find some of
the physiology connected with it too. So what would be
the payoffs of this? And of course, as you know,
you and I and everybody else in our field have
been discussing this forever. But I don't buy the party line.
(20:54):
The party line is that men are more adotors than
women because they have they can spread more seed every
time they have an extra sexual event, they can have
a baby and spread more DNA, So that's adapted. Sure,
I can buy that. But then they go on in
this argument to say, well, you know, women can't have
a child each time that they have sex with a
(21:15):
new partner, so it's to their advantage to hold on
to the partner that they've got. Well, I don't think so.
First of all, who are all these men sleeping with?
Now this is a basic math issue. Excuse it. Either,
there's an awful lot of women who are faithful and
a few women who are sleeping with everybody. Let's go
back in a million years. Is it man and a
woman they're walking along in a little hunting and gathering group,
(21:37):
and occasionally she slips over the hill and has sex
with somebody else. But what is she getting. She may
have one more baby that might be nice, but I
mean from a Darwinian perspective, more genetic variety, and they're young.
But the bottom line is if her current partner dies
or deserts her, she may have an insurance policy somebody
(21:58):
who uh will step in and help her out, and
she will certainly get extra resources. I mean, men around
the world give their adulterous partners everything from beer and
food and vacations and money and forms of stability. And
I think that that that could have had real payoffs
(22:20):
for women for many, many millions of years, hence leaving
this tendency not only in men but in women to
be the otherest. It has payoffs for both sexes. It
makes a lot of sense. And also, you know, I
just think of how unnatural monogamy or how you know,
how much that's really asking a species to have these
(22:42):
three different drives all coalesced in one person and to
be and just like for that to be optimally satisfying. Yeah,
it just seems like a hard thing to ask out
of humans. I think monogamy is natural. I think adultery
is natural too well. To basic evolutionary side people means
a pair bond. You can have a pair bond and
(23:03):
not be sexually faithful to that pair. You can be
socially faithful to that pair. But then that's why, as
you know that we call it social monogamy. I mean,
you know, there's two people living in a house and
they've got children, and they go to work, and they
behave like a pair bonded animals and are but if
they both speak around on the side, they're adulters as well.
So when you really look around the world at all
(23:26):
of the basic variations in reproductive strategy, do you would
and unlessen you went and counted heads, how many people
are living in that hut, in that tepee, in that igo,
in that appointment building, in that home. It's generally true
almost everywhere in the world. We are an animal that
forms pair bond. We are also adulterous. We are both.
We are an animal that has what I call a
(23:49):
dual human reproductive strategy, a tremendous drive to pair up
and rear our children as a team, and also a
tendency for adultery. Divorce and rema marriage and then with
their large brain, with their cognitive processes, we make decisions
about our lives. I mean, you know, and I think
some people make their decisions more easily than others. It
(24:11):
is my guess that certain personality styles have an easier
time with with with being faithful to a partner. Yeah,
I mean that's good. Segue into the brain research on
love that shows that your decision ais the brain kind
of the blood full goes away. Yeah, it kind of
shuts down, right, Yeah, when you fall in love, but
basic brain regions in the prefrontal cortex linked with decision
(24:35):
making begin to begin to Yeah, the flood the blood
flows out, just like you said, And you're very poor
at making decisions. I mean, you see somebody who's in love,
and you know she'll say to you or he'll say
to you, Oh, this purven is, this person is proven
for me. It doesn't matter that she's married, that she
has got ten children, that she's got three heads. We'll
get through that. Well, we'll have a fetish for three heads.
(25:00):
I bet there's a fetish for everything, right, probably, Well,
where do fetishes come in? Sorry, my mind just goes
makes associations all over the place. Where where does that
adapt it? What's the adaptive value of like liking to
suck toes? For instance? Oh? Boy, well, I don't study fetishes,
but apparently men I have any more than women do. Uh?
(25:20):
And what I recall? And you might know more about
this than I do. I would get you a guess
that you do that. Why would you guess I would?
Because you've written on this. Oh yes, I've written on
a lot of scientifically scientifically exactly, No, I didn't figure.
I don't know, are you in I'm not really no,
(25:42):
neither of my But anyway, you know, it's it's very
valuable for men to pick up on any possible chance
for sex. I mean, the women is the custodian of
the egg. We own the egg. You've got to seminate
that egg. And if you miss an opportunity to inceminate
(26:04):
that egg, you may miss an opportunity to spread your
DNA on into tomorrow. So is there really important though,
like like who you sleep with, Like isn't there a
great value like of making sure that it's going to
be good genes like as supposed to just having sex indiscriminately,
like couldn't there be a good case to be made
why it's not good to have sex even though if
(26:25):
you're a guy, to not have it indiscriminately, well, if
you can then walk out and never see the child
or mother again and there's no you know, there's no
reproductive fallout on you, you you know, I mean, I think
that's what most scientists are talking about, the fact that,
you know, in relatively indiscriminate sex on the part of man,
(26:46):
if it has no well, if they don't get a
sex disease, of course, I mean, you know, and they
don't spend a lot of metabolic energy on it, of course,
and if they don't get shamed from the culture for it,
what they've got to lose. But the bottom line is
men are much more fetishist than women are. And the classic,
(27:07):
the classic hypothesis has been that they are more interested
in sucking toes and other kinds of fetishes because sometime
in their past, sucking toes or whatever it was was
linked with some sort of sexual opportunity, and so they
have now gotten into their brain that these things are
connected and that toasucking is going to lead to sexual opportunity,
(27:28):
and unconsciously, of course, leads to reproduction, so women are
far less uh, be leaguered by by fetishes. I think
there are just as many women that go to furry
conventions as men. But maybe that's a whole different thing.
What kind of conventions furry conventions where they dress up
(27:50):
as you know, animals conventions. Yeah, they're called furry conventions.
I'll put that in my show notes. Yeah, it's a
fascinating subculture. It's a fascinating subculture, says a little bit
like Halloween. Halloween where you could just be somebody else. Maybe.
I mean, I saw this TV special of all these
different kind of fetishes that some people have balloon fetishes,
you know, and and maybe you're right, maybe at some
(28:12):
point in their life, like the balloon preceded a sexual
opportunity or something and they got imprinted or something. But right,
it's just fascinating the human variation, you know, it's so fascinating.
Human variation is fascinating. But I've always been interested in
I've been really dedicated my life to why we're all
alike instead of why we're all different. And here's where
(28:33):
feelings of romantic love, feelings of attachment, the sex drive
we really all carry that those around in our head.
How we express them is very different from one person
to another and one culture to the next, but the
actual feelings are pretty much the same. Yeah, you've basically
you've You've said at some point you said, as long
as humans survive, these three drives will survive. I think
(28:56):
it's fear system, you know, and the anger system. These
are basic survival mechanism. Is a matter of fact, feelings
of intense romantic love emanated from this reward system, the
brain system for wanting, for craving, for session, for focus,
and for motivation. And that system really starts in a
(29:17):
tiny little factory wane in the basement of the mind,
in the ventral tech metal area, and that little brain
region that really generates the dopamains to give you that
feeling of romantic love. That little factory lies right next
to the factories that orchestrate hunger and thirst. This is
a survival mechanism. We know it from looking at the brain.
(29:38):
So it seems like, you know, because dopamine is all
about the wanting System's not about the liking system, right,
opiates and all that stuff that's liking. But so we
can like, you know, doping signals possibility of a reward,
but doesn't guarantee that we'll actually enjoy the reward and
once we obtain it. So would you say that, like
(30:00):
the attachment system might be the only out of the
three that's that's more sossociated with the liking. Wow, that's
a wonderful question. You can feel deeply attached to somebody
who don't like you can feel deeply attached to somebody
you know, maybe all the good point So maybe it's
independent of all three, Like all three can either you know,
(30:21):
only stay in the in the in the wanting system,
but it could also you can also like it, you know.
I bet there's lots of people who have lost for
for people that they actually can't stand. I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, certainly you could be in love with somebody
who doesn't share your values, your background, your interest. I
(30:42):
mean I remember reading a quote recently, you know, by
a man who said, you know, I am so I
am totally in love with a woman in the office
or name is Emily, although I know that we have
no chance of ever spending a life together. She is
an obsession, you know. Oh, yes, So the obsession thing
is interesting because now the obsessions happened when it's people
(31:05):
we shouldn't like. Yeah, yeah, and we obsession can be
for somebody you really do like to. But you know,
the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of
love is indifference. And when you're feeling attachment, that's not indifferent.
Sex drive is not in different and romantic love is
not indifferent. The emotions can swing from hate to anger,
(31:27):
to jealousy, to rage, to curiosity to intimacy, but they're
not indifferent. I like that a lot. So we talk
a lot of in society use the phrase animal attraction. Yeah,
I mean, are we all animals? Like? You know? So
all these systems, even love, could be considered animal attraction
(31:49):
as well in a way, right. Oh you know. I've
written five books and my very favorite chapter is in
my fourth book called Why We Love, and it's the
second chapter on animal magnetism. And that the way it Oh,
thank you, thank you, thank you. So I I maintain
(32:10):
that the basic animal attraction is romantic love. You know,
when you look at prairie bowls, like a little field
mouse little prairie bowl, and you look at the males
when he is suddenly attracted to a female the amount
of activity in the dopamine system increases by fifty percent.
So these animals are feeling the wanting when they look
(32:32):
at that individual. Now they're not writing poems, they're not
singing songs, they're not building castles to a partner, but
they're feeling that feeling of attraction. And it is that
feeling of attraction that you and I have come with
our big cerebral cortex to call romantic love. And when
you take a look at everything from elephants to to oh,
(32:54):
there was one quote that I found from black rhinos
and it was a female black rhino. This is from
an ethologist, you know, describing rhino black rhino behavior. And
the female was just standing there looking at the male,
and the male was parading in front of her, and
he was marching back and forth, and he was pulling
up bushes and trussing them in the air and swizzling
(33:16):
his little swinging his little tail around. And then I
remember the quote looking for all the world as if
he were dancing. And you see this throughout the animal community,
and even among birds. You see jealousy among birds too,
and certainly anger and fear, etc. So I think that
romantic love is a basic brain system that evolved along
(33:38):
with the fear system, the anger system, and many other
brain systems, but one of the basic survival mechanisms in
all mammals that drive us to choose one individual rather
than another. So what's more irrational or crazy? Love or lust? Well,
I'll only say this, and you go and you ask
(33:59):
somebody to go to better with you and they say no,
thank you. You don't kill yourself. Some males, you know,
do go crazy over that, but yeah, you go crazy.
But that people in the crimes of passion around the
world are not from the sex drive because they walked
into their own bedroom and with another man, that kind
(34:20):
of thing. So I feel like there might be a
sex difference in that. You know, for men, maybe getting
rejected sexually might be like worse a feeling than being
rejected romantically, whereas maybe the reverse is true for women.
Do you think that's possible. I actually think it's the reverse.
The data show that men are two and a half
times my lifely to kill themselves when a romantic relationship
(34:43):
is over. Yeah, oh yeah, And it's been in books
for a long time by psychologists. Elaine Hatfield wrote about it.
You know, I do this annual study with Match dot
Com called Singles in America, and we don't pull the
match population. We pull the American population, and so it's
based on the US since it's a representative sample. We
got the right neurow blacks, whites, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, oral, suburban, urban,
(35:07):
every part of the country, every age group, et cetera.
And I've always you know, we have been busting myths
about women for fifty years. I'd like to bust some
of these myths about men. And one we find this
over every single year we find this, Men fall in
love more often, they fall in love a lot faster
because they're so visual. When they do fall in love,
(35:27):
they want to introduce the women to friends and families sooner,
They want to move in sooner. Men have more intimate
conversations with their wives than women do with their husbands.
Because women have their intimate conversations with their girlfriends and
or two and a half times more likely, it kills
themselves when the relationship is over. So you know, women
(35:47):
are the sticky sex. They're the what secks, picky, picky sex.
So I mean, this is so interesting because you know,
people have so many of these stereotypes and these preconceptions
in their head. You know, let's talk about the hookups,
the hookup culture which has become very prominent in college campuses,
which are mutual friend Justin Garcia. Do you still talk
to Justin? Oh? I spoke to him yesterday. Oh that's
(36:10):
so cool. Yeah, I know, I know he thinks very
highly of you. Yeah. You know. He's done some interesting
research showing that a hookup is never really just a
casual hookup, that most men and women, you know, boys
and girls in college campuses really do have some sort
of thing in the back of the head they hope
that they hope it kind of turns into something. You know.
(36:31):
His original study in Binghamton University, apparently fifty of both
men and women, when asked why they went into a hookup,
said that they were hoping to create a romantic relationship.
And with our Singles in America study, we did this
same thing, and of course this was a national study
of a much larger and more varied group, and I
(36:55):
can't remember, I guess about fifteen to twenty percent wanted
to get to know the person better. What's interesting is
then I asked the question, have you ever had a
hookup or a one night stand that turned into a
long term partnership. And every year I ask it, over
thirty five percent say they've had that experience. And I think,
(37:16):
just like what you said, you know, casual sex is
not casual unless you're so drunk you can't remember who
it was. It happened in the brain. I mean, it
triggers five of the ten cranial alerts. You really see them,
smell them, hear them, taste them, and touch them. I mean,
you know, and you know, any stimulation of the genitals
can drive up the dopamine system and push you over
(37:36):
the threshold. And tell me about it, Tell me about it.
Oh yeah, well that's what happened to me. And of
course with orgasm there's a real flood of oxytocin and
vasi present and you can get real feelings of attachment
to the person too. So casual sex is not casual.
And I you know I've often said to people is
that you know, there's two ways to get the boy
or the girl. Either you spend months discussing their college
(38:00):
or you get them into bed tonight and trigger these
brain circuits for romantic love and attachment. And in many respects.
I think this book up culture is actually, oddly enough,
oddly enough, I think it's part of something that I
call slow love. I've come to believe that I've been
thinking to myself and you as a as a as
(38:21):
a scientist also, I mean, what is all this casual
sex about? Is it casual? What's going on here? I mean,
it's a lot of metabolic energy. When you have sex
with somebody, You're spending your time, You're spending your energy.
You get your feelings hurt, you can get sex diseases,
women can get pregnant. There's probab of just some reason
for this. And so I've come to believe we are
(38:42):
in an age of what I call slow love, fast sex,
slow love. And it comes from a lot of studies
that I've done, but one of them was a particular
point particularly pointed to me. Apparently sixty seven percent of
Americans are who are living with somebody are terrified of divorce,
fight of it. And so I've come to believe that
(39:02):
what we are doing now is a long pre commitment
stage before we tie the knot, you know, get to
know them person, we're having sex with them, then do
go into friends with benefits, so you see them more regularly,
but not as a couple. Then you begin to introduce
yourselves as a couple. Then you begin to live together.
Then you get a pre opt just in case not
(39:23):
marriage doesn't work. Marriage used to be the beginning of
a relationship. Now it's the finale. Yeah, you've said a
great quote. I forget wherever you said. If you don't
want to get attached to someone, you'd be better off
not just not sleeping with them. Absolutely, that there really is.
You know, it's good to consider here. You know, because
of casual sex very rarely is just casual self right,
(39:46):
And I can cut you off really fast too. It
could turn you off really fast too. You know that
stuff by Gordon Gallup and others studying kissing and they asked,
I think over a thousand people, and I think over
fifty percent it had, you know, the kiss and death.
I mean they didn't even get in bed together. Just
kissing the person one time was the end of it.
When they were beginning to pull for somebody, then the
(40:07):
person kissed him and they said, Nope, I can't do this.
So that was a deal breaker. Do their breath stink
or something to the person's breath stink or something. Maybe yeh,
his mouthful like a rhinoceros. Who's who's to know? Or
maybe he was who knows? I didn't that was in
the academic article. But we've probably all been there at
some point, you know. And yeah, all the way through courtship,
(40:32):
there's these breaking points and escalection points. That's true. Yeah,
I think something. I think both me and you are
probably fundamentally romantics. You know. I really do have this
sort of like this romantic ideal in my head about
what things should look like. Do you think there's great
value in like can that be dangerous? Like being too romantic?
(40:55):
Nobody gets out of love alive unless you don't play
the game at all. Nobody gets out of the level life.
Everybody has times of tremendous ecstasy and tremendous agony, tremendous despair.
I once there was a study years ago and they asked,
you know, if you ever been rejected in love? And
over ninety three percent of both men and women, they
(41:18):
asked the question, have you ever dumped somebody who was
really in love with you? And the next question was,
have you ever been dumped by somebody who you were
really in love with and about ninety five percent of
both men and women said yes to both. And these
people were in college. I mean they've also now they
got their twenties, thirties, forties, fifteen, sixty, seventies, and eighties
(41:40):
to get dumped again or to dump somebody. So I mean,
it's one of the most powerful brain systems the human
animal has ever evolved, and it's gonna be with us
as long as we survived. I think it's a very poetic,
beautiful phrasing. So we can we can, we can wrap
this up. But before we leave, on want to I
want to make queer like I really do believe you are.
(42:02):
You know, I've heard you talk a lot, and I
do think you're a romantic, you know, and like, even
though you study biology, what are you saying complete REMI yeah,
And you know, even though something so unique about you
and you're such a leader, you're like by far like
a leader in this field is because you you bring
in so many perspectives that most people don't bring in
and tie all together. So you don't just study the biology,
(42:24):
but you study the cultural aspect and you study contextual aspects.
I have a call here. I think that you said
to Krista Tippett in a recent interview with her. You said,
if I die tomorrow, I want people to really know
this that I believe this, that the more we know
about the brain, the body, and human evolution, the more
we will come to understand the power of culture to
(42:44):
change that biology. Biology, culture, religion are all part of humanity.
They don't threaten each other. They enhance one another. It's
got chill reasons. I'm crazy about you. It is exactly true.
I think I could say it even better than that.
You know, people are scared of biology. The more we
get to understand the biology, the more we're going to
(43:06):
come to understand the power of culture to change that biology.
They go hand in hand. Well, I say we leave
on that note because I can't think of a better
note than that. Thank you so much for having a
chat with me today. I really appreciate it great. Thank
you too. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I
(43:30):
hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react
in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add our
rading and review of the podcast on iTunes. Thanks for
being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune
(43:51):
in next season for more on the Mind, Brain, Behavior
and Creativity m
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.