Why Him? Why Her? | Helen Fisher | Talks at Google

okay my name is Alana Weiss and this is my pleasure to introduce Helen Fisher to the author's at Google series Helen is one of the world's leading experts on the biology of romantic love and attachment and she has studied romantic interpersonal attraction for over 30 years she is an anthropology professor at Rutgers University and is currently the most reference scholar in the love research community in 2005 matcom hired her to design the matching algorithm for its sister site chemistry comm helen also happens to live in my hometown New York City yeah and today Helen will discuss her newest book why him why her we will have time for Q&A so do remember to come up to the standing mic to ask your questions and now please join me in welcoming Helen well I'm delighted to be here and thanks for coming and also for anybody else's in the airwaves and listening what I and my colleagues art Aaron Lucy Brown and Bianca Acevedo have done is we've put 49 people who were madly in love into a functional MRI brain scanner and begun to study and map some of the brain circuitry of romantic love 17 people had just fallen madly in love 13 had just been rejected in love and in our most recent experiment 17 reported that they were still in love not in love not just feeling attachment in love after an average of 21 years of marriage so I had done all that research and I had finished book number four which was why we love which was on the brain circuitry of romantic love how it evolved other animals how they love what happens in the brain when you're rejected in love etc and match.com as Lana said came to me right before Christmas in 200 for and asked me to meet with them so I met with them two days after Christmas and in the middle of the morning they asked me why do you fall in love with one person rather than another and I said I don't know nobody knows psychologists do know that you tend to fall in love with somebody from your same socioeconomic background same general level of intelligence same general level of good looks same basic religious and social values we tend to fall in love with somebody who can give us the lifestyle that we want the other things that we need your child is certainly plays a role but nobody really knows how really hasn't been proven and probably plays a role but nobody knows how and we often fall in love with somebody who's in love with us but you can walk into a room where everybody is from your same background general level of intelligence general level of good looks and religious guys and you don't fall in love with all of them and so I began to wonder I'm a biological anthropologist I study human evolution in the brain I began to wonder when people are constantly saying we had no chemistry or we had chemistry and I thought to myself maybe there's something to that and maybe if I were to look at basic biological systems and then create a questionnaire to see to what degree you express basic biological systems I could try and figure out if you're also naturally drawn to people of certain chemical styles and so what I'm going to do is start out by telling you a little bit about some of my basic research on the brain and what we found in some of our brain scanning and then go on to give you my new hypothesis and information on why you fall in love with one person rather than another I ended up creating a questionnaire to see to what degree you express four very broad biological systems associated with the neural chemicals dopamine serotonin testosterone and the last one being estrogen and oxytocin and this questionnaire has now been taken by seven million people in 39 countries around the world five million on the dating site chemistry comm in the United States so this is a story a little about what is love and then why you fall in love with one person rather than another in the jungles of Guatemala there stands a temple of the grandest built by the grandest sun king of the grandest city state to count of the grandest civilization of the Americas the Maya his name was Captain Crunch I will he died he stood he lived into his 80s he stood over six feet tall and he was buried beneath this monument in or around 720 ad and Mayan inscriptions proclaim that he was deeply in love with his wife and so he bought it he built a temple to honor her and every spring and autumn exactly at the equinox the Sun rises behind his temple to perfectly bathe her temple with his shadow and as the Sun sets behind her temple on that same afternoon it perfectly bathes his temple with her shadow today some thirteen hundred years later these two lovers still touch from the grave around the world people love they sing for love they dance for love they compose poems and stories about love they do retell myths and legends about love they have love charms love potions love magic they pined for love they live for love they kill for love and they die for love anthropologists have now looked at over 170 societies and they found some kind of evidence of romantic love in every single one there's not any negative evidence in the world everywhere they looked they found romantic love as a matter of fact I was in ishtam Istanbul about a year ago and I was so tired and I was in the archaeology museum and I was leaning on sort of one of those glass cases and I sort of cast my eyes down and there was a fist-sized lump of clay in size with Konya form and underneath it it said the first love poem 2036 BC so mankind has probably lived on love I will I'm going to maintain for at least four million years I think there's a lot of different kinds of Shakespeare arrests what is to love I think we've been wondering what love is since our ancestors lay and watched the Stars a million years ago 3 million years ago but I've come to believe that we've evolved three very different basic brain systems for mating and reproduction one is the sex drive the craving for sexual gratification WH Auden called an intolerable neural itch associated with testosterone in both men and women if you can feel it for a range of partners you can feel when you're driving along in your car when you read a book when you see a movie it's not necessarily focused on any one particular individual second brain system is romantic love that's what I've studied most recently I'm going to maintain its associated with elevated activity in the dopamine system probably also norepinephrine system and low levels of serotonin a very different brain system passionate love obsessive love being in love the first thing that happens when you fall in love with somebody is they take on what I call special meaning as George Bernard Shaw said he said love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another and indeed that's exactly what we do and then you focus on the person everything about him is special you know their car is different from every other car in the parking line their book bag is different from every the street they if they live on the movies that they look at the books that they everything about them is special and in fact before I put these people in the machine I would ask them what they did not like about their sweetheart and they could lift what they didn't like but then they swept the VAT aside and focused on what they did they wouldn't notice after that if the person had three heads oh they're all pretty to me they say there's many other characteristics of it you become very sexually possessive you know if you're just casually sleeping with somebody you don't really care if they're sleeping with somebody else but when you're in love the number of crimes of passion from possessiveness is staggering around the world you're also very dependent on on the person as Walt Whitman said he said oh I would stay call for you what people will do when they are in love is absolutely staggering it was a middle-aged businessman in New York who summed it up he said every anything she liked I liked real simple the three main characteristics of romantic love is you crave this person you'd like to go to bed with them but what you really want to do is to call to write to invite you out to say that that they love you the second a dramatic feeling is motivation an intense motivation to win this person indeed the motivation to win life's greatest prize which is an appropriate mating partner and last of not least of the main characteristics of romantic love is obsessive thinking you can't stop thinking about this person as a matter of fact before I put them in the machine the first question I would ask them is how long have you been in love and I wanted that I wanted that really soon I wanted them crazy these machines are expensive as time consuming and in our first experiment I want to just have fun while in love but the most important question I would ask them is what percentage of the day and night do you think about your sweetheart and they would say I never I go to bed thinking about her I wake up in the morning thinking about him I never stop thinking about him those are the ones that I would put in the machine the third brain system is attachment as to other scientists have associated with the two other chemical systems those very closely related systems for oxytocin and vasopressin and these three brain systems are very often not connected you know when you fall in love with somebody everything about them is sexy three weeks ago is another nice guy in the office suddenly everything about this human being is sexy and it's largely because elevated activity in the dopamine system triggers testosterone and the sex drive but can the reverse be true can you just have casual sex with somebody and then fall madly in love with well not always I mean most of us have had casual sex with somebody even hoping we would fall in love with them and it didn't happen but it can happen and the reason it can happen is because any kind of sexual stimulation triggers a testosterone in the brain I mean triggers dopamine in the brain and you can fall in love with them the matter of fact right after orgasm there's a real peak norepinephrine all spike of it which can help push you over the threshold into falling in love and you can also begin to feel real attachment to somebody after you've had sex with them and that's because with orgasm there's a real flood of oxytocin and vasopressin so I don't care what you sleep with anybody in the world but I just say the casual sex is not casual unless you're so drunk you can't remember the person it's going to do something to your brain I'm going to turn you on or turn you off as a matter of fact I've got a graduate student Justin Garcia who is studying hooking up and on a college campus and he reports that 50% of women and a 52% of men start the hook-up hoping that the person will fall in love with them and they don't know it consciously but unconsciously they're they're using they're going to they quite likely could trigger these brain systems for romantic love as a matter of fact once one third of those who started to hook up actually did start a romantic relationship with them probably because these brain systems are connected they're not always connected though you can feel deep attachment for one person while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else while you feel the sex drive when for a whole range of people as a matter of fact you can lie in bed at night and swing from deep feelings of attachment for one person to wild feelings of infatuation for somebody else to feelings of the sex drive for a range of people it's as if there's a committee beta going on in your head as you're swinging from one brain system to another Plato once said when the mind is thinking it's talking to itself we wouldn't be able to do it if these three brain systems weren't connected in many ways unconnected in in many ways so I think that the sex drive I think they all evolved I think the sex drive evolved to get you out there looking for a whole range of partners I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your made an energy on just one at a time and I think the detachment the third brain system evolved to enable you to tolerate this human being and stick with them at least long enough to raise a child through infancy to as a team I won't go into more than and just simply go on to say a little bit more about our brain scanning experiment this happened to be in The New Yorker magazine you can't really get to people in a long dark hole their head and advice but nevertheless we've put a lot of people into the machine it were said that they were in love and we found a great many things but one of the things that we found in all three of our experiments are just fall in love rejected in love and in love long-term was activity in a tiny little factory near the base of the brain called the ventral tegmental area and in fact we found it in some cells called the egg ten cells and these are cells that actually produce dopamine and send dopamine to much of the brain but actually largely to the reward system the brain the part of the brain for wanting for craving for focus for motivation and in fact and I've read hundreds of I mean poets all over the world of described what love is but I think that they perhaps the best biological explanation was by Plato who said the god of love lives in a state of need it is in need it's a homeostatic imbalance that will that'll drive you to do remarkable things to to win I think that here's one of our brain scans we've got a lot of them of the VTA I think that romantic love evolves from what I call animal attraction there's not an animal on this planet it will copulate with anything listener in a little box in a scientist laboratory too old too young too scruffy too stupid looking the wrong color you know faded feathers they won't do it they have favourites as a matter of fact ethologists have spoken forever about mate choice sexual selective sexual proceptivity all kinds of names for the fact that animals have favourites and in fact we're beginning to know that the same dopamine system is involved in animal attraction and I think we actually this explains love at first sight I think that you know you can get instantly afraid of something and you can instantly fall in love I think it comes from I mean a squirrel in the beginning of the mating season she's got to find another squirrel and she can't spend three years discussing his college plan she's got to get on with his project and you can see in all kinds of animals an instant attraction to particular individuals so I came to believe because this reward system which is way below the cortex way below even sealing areas but motivation areas associated with motivation that romantic love was a drive a powerful mating Drive much more powerful than the sex drive if you asked me to go to bed with you and they say no thank you you don't kill yourself but around the world people suffer terribly when they have been rejected in love so I then had to address this issue of why does this brain system become triggered by some people and not by others and there's a lot of reasons that you fall in love with one person rather than other and I ran over some of them but we tend to fall in love with people from the same ethnic backgrounds socio-economic background religious values goals similar degree of intelligence I'm not sure how they measure that a similar level of education these days a similar degree of good looks got to have the right lifestyle childhood special training is important perfect person can come and sit on your lap and if you you're not ready you won't notice it but I began to think maybe chemistry also plays a role I'm trying to add the biological component to this and to all of the cultural components these perfectly a part of a part of the game but not the whole story I think so um there's a lot of chemicals in the brain most of them code for the beating of the heart the blinking of the eyes water metabolism etcetera it's only a few chemicals that are so far associated directly associated with personality traits and the basic ones are others so I read through the genetic literature the nerd literature on neurotransmitters neurohormones sex change people drugs of abuse drugs like l-dopa for Parkinson's disease Prozac Paxil etc etc and I began to accumulate a host of psychological traits associated with these chemical systems I just named them these these around I'm rather stuck with these names actually having read all this I then went back to the psychological literature Plato had names for most of these types Aristotle did Hippocrates at the four humors Galen in the second century Carl Jung myers-briggs the Enneagram a great many people have intuitively found four very broad psycho psycho biological types what I really stumbled on is adding what the chemistry of this is so I'm going to go through the types and then what I did is I created a questionnaire to see to what degree you express all four of these these are chemical systems in the brain so there's four different scales we measured to some degree on all of them I'm largely dopamine and and estrogen and oxytocin at Google I don't know I would imagine this a good deal with testosterone and perhaps even the serotonin but anyway you'll let me know but explorers are born free they like novelty they don't like taking risks but they're willing to tolerate risk in order to see the world enormous ly curious they have most interest Plato called them the artisan they're they're the most creative of the four types impulsive energetic Restless optimistic enthusiastic flexible open-minded often a very democratic the most sexual of all the types if you are taking something like prozac or paxil which is dampening your sex right they will give you something like wellbutrin to drive up the dopamine are their most sexual of the types there's a better the downside is a dark side to every moon of course and they're more likely to be manic unpredictable reckless most of the addictions have something to do with the dopamine and norepinephrine system on reflective they look out not in as a matter of fact I was making a speech to some therapists actually in California a few months ago and and I was saying that I'm not terribly interested in Who I am and because I'm exploring I look out not in and I mean I care enough to not make exactly the same mistakes over and over but I don't care to analyze Who I am so I rather blithely that I didn't care who I was and for the back of the room some guy shouts you want to talk about it and and I really didn't I did a study at chemistry dot-com of 178 thousand men and women to see what top ten words I created a 170 words and then I just went through you know we do we do it mechanically I mean mathematically the top ten words of each of these types and the top word is adventure spontaneous spontaneous energy new fun traveling passion active busy energy dopamine I think our president is a very good example of the Explorer variety I think the country he meant it he not only meant it psychologically and sociologically but genetically he feels it and I think the country so an authenticity there when he was advertising change and indeed it's true daring to start where he started and to and where he landed is was quite something I don't know if there was a there's a newspaper in New York I don't know if it's national called the onion and and there was a headliner that said black man given worst job in the world and he dared take it flexible very optimistic creative in the way he handles just about everything artistic I don't know if you've seen his doodles but he can literally draw a face that looks like the person that's that's very skilled artistically the explorer tends to have the highest educational level he certainly did because they're so curious a dopamine is associated with quote-unquote being comfortable in your skin you can see the way he walks is with it with a casual nurse I mean with it with it with it with a style but you know that I'm you see I don't know at the inauguration you watched him and Bush walking down the steps together and you see him you know going like so and which is really quite lumbering next to him they also tend to have people who are expressive of dopamine also have more expressive faces which he does I think that have a different kind of Explorer but the same temper was studying temperament we're not studying intelligence we're not studying interest with something temperament is Angelina Jolie has a tattoo of a window freedom don't fence me in energetic curious unconventional they don't follow the rules in Si unless the rules make sense to them matter of fact I was on the radio a couple days I'm gonna on a book tour now and I was on the radio a couple days ago and I was with a woman who was I mean I the other end the radio who was quite clearly the explorer type and I told her well they don't tend to really follow the rules unless they make sense and she said oh yeah when I see street signs I take them as suggestions and and that's the Explorer pillar of society is the Builder individual's expressive of certain genetic genes in the serotonin system for anybody who really knows genetics what we have to do now is I'm collecting blood saliva and urine to really nail this down there's I have many other validity points I've got my academic articles submitted and when that comes out it'll be on my website etc but long short is that we're using single nucleotide polymorphisms at this point for anybody is a geneticist in the room anyway traditional conventional cautious but not fearful not scared but their questions calm social popular networking they're they want to know everybody they want to know you know there is shouldn't who you know they're the ones flipping the hamburgers at the neighborhood party managerial very cooperative literal precise concrete details I recently may a terrible mistake with the journalist who happened to be a builder it was in the state of Washington and and she wanted the facts and I was happy to give her the facts but I only like facts if they build a theory that's Explorer and I could see she didn't like me and so the clearer that came to me the more nervous I got and the more flamboyant I got but more theoretical and you know I should have just stuck to the facts because what I read in the newspaper was staggering following day persistent conscientious orderly persistent it's called sustained attention these are the ones who can keep doing something in fact when I was really young I came to San Francisco from the East Coast in the 60s and I needed a job and I tried to get a job in a factory canning Peas and they wouldn't have me because I would add my arm stuck in the machine in two hours and because it but you know you got to have a sustained attention to and those who are expressive a serotonin do have them loyal is very loyal tea is very important they respect authority they like rules regulations schedules they seek respectability Plato called them The Guardian they want to serve self transcendence is the academic term for religiosity and we found some genes associated with religiosity in the serotonin system this is the most interesting of all they are generally not terribly creative if you the more you drive up serotonin the less exploratory behavior you have they don't tell you that when you take Prozac and paxil but the day that's what the data is however they're good with numbers very good with numbers the downside of this they're stubborn can be stubborn close-minded rigid moralistic unreflecting and controlling the words they use the top word they use is family caring morals respect loyal trust that twice they use trust the top 10 with values morals loyal respect as a matter of fact I did a countrywide you know you can tell on chemistry comm where people are you know writing in from and there were many more explorers in the big cities and many more builders out in the countryside I could even see the red states and the blue states associated with the serotonin and the dopamine patterns in the brain I think a very good example of a guy was a builder was the right guy in the right place at the right time is Gordon Brown very smart these are words from the economist frugal that's a serotonin based control freak morold as these are descriptions of him from the economists rectitude duty all all activity expressive of serotonin what's really interesting is he is really good with numbers he was wonderful as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I was just talking to some Brits some a couple days ago and he's I mean I can't say he's happy about it but he's sort of in his heaven right now because we got a world crisis with numbers and I cried financial numbers and of course he's the right guy to be abuse for them a man I think it was in the wrong place at the wrong time was Colin Powell it it was about 26% of people wanted in America were in favor of going into Iraq before he made his speech at the United Nations after his speech at the United Nations of 75 or something people were interested in going to Iraq he had been duped into thinking there were weapons of mass destruction but I think it was his loyalty to Bush that helped you know he was willing to support Bush's need to go into Iraq so here was some biological traits that were in the wrong time in the wrong place I think Tiger Woods is very much of a builder I mean what is golf but patience calm focus and networking the director shoot for the stars test out the rationale Plato called them analytical logical direct decisive tough minded pragmatic they're going to do what works I don't care if it hurts your feelings we're going that direction it's best very good at what academics call rule-based systems everything from spatial mechanical mathematical engineering skills elevated activity in the testosterones are focused really in narrow focus but a very deep focus competitive ambitious emotionally contained people were very high on testosterone when you watch them talk they're just moving their lives is that I'm moving in any of the faces just lips and self-discipline real musical understanding music music really is a spatial phenomenon particularly if you are especially skilled I think Beethoven was a probably a very difficult man very direct decisive exacting tough minded and very musical heroic altruism I think these are the ones that rush into a burning building to save a stranger you know you we're constantly saying calling somebody a hero and then they'll say oh no I was just doing my job what are they being they're being very analytical very matter-of-fact about it mind blindness and academic term for the directors inability to sort of climb into your head climb into somebody else's head and and see what they're thinking less empathy more aloof poor verbal skills but very good technical skills of course and aggressive I think these are the some of the top ten words intelligence debate geek nerd ambitious driven politics challenge top ten words used by the director I think here we got our perfect director the face is built that is a high testosterone jaw very high testosterone jaw is built is a very dramatic hi every brow ridges high for it that's all indications of testosterone the face and of course the body gives all kinds of indications of who you are biologically we are proud to be tough minded called himself a maverick said I'm not mr. congeniality by the way all four of these types like who they are I mean what I've discovered so far I mean the Explorer likes being curious and creative and novelty seeking the Builder likes being loyal and conscientious the the director likes being tough minded and and and direct of course he was a fighter pilot that's real special relation he used the word fight 43 times and it is acceptance speech this is testosterone I I am around the test I'm not going to go into how you build an academic test but long assures you've got to prove that what you say you're studying you're studying and so I've got a lot of other things sort of secret things in there too to study that to prove that I'm studying what I'm studying and one of them is it comes out of 1930s and if you look at your right hand if you're a man or a left hand if you're a woman palm towards you as testosterone washes over the brain in the womb it builds a fourth finger that is longer than the second finger if you had more estrogen in the womb you will have a second finger that is longer or the same length as the fourth finger nobody knows why you'll find it actually throughout the animal community it's not just it didn't just evolve with throwing things and but nevertheless I what I would do this is one of my tasks I would look at your fourth finger I got seven million of them of course and and then I would look at those individuals who scored very high on my director scale to see if they also had a longer fourth finger and indeed here was a great moment for me this was the moment he conceded I was overjoyed as you could tell and I picked up my New York Times and it was right on the front page of it just what I was looking for I think Hillary Clinton is also very much of the director tough minded and vicious she's going to understand angle of miracle Chancellor of Germany very well she would have done done well with Margaret Thatcher she's going to even do good well with Sarkozy etc the fourth type Plato calls them the philosopher king estrogen and oxytocin all of these chemicals are related you know there's always the the brain is ratios we're not studying just one chemical system we're studying that chemical system in relation to all kinds of other systems but you got to put your foot down someplace and so I'm calling you know the most dramatic part of this system by its name they see the big picture holistic synthetic thinking very imaginative I actually think imagination is different from creativity we go into that a different time good linguistic skills basic articulation is finding the right word rapidly a woman's ability to find the right word rapidly goes up in the middle of the menstrual cycle when estrogen levels peak but men too who are high on estrogen are more articulate actually a great many football players have a great deal of estrogen so and you can be high in estrogen and testosterone low on both or high on one and high in the other where we find people's skills good at what we call theory of mind intuition climbing into somebody's brain nurturing empathetic trusting tactful emotionally expressive enter these are the ones who want to know the meaning of life and who you are and who I am and what that meant when you said this and nuts and such very agreeable very idealistic very egalitarian the dark side of their moon indecisive unfocused gullible nosy plaguing black backstabbing they don't want to the not a grant they don't want to get you in the face they don't want to confront so they stab you in the back Rubin ate I can't decide why we can do this we and unforgiving the negotiators words a passionate passion real heart kind sensitive read these are the big readers sweet learning random they like random they get random it's not random to them actually I am one of them but they like you know and actually it has to do with brain architecture but I don't have time to go in it for that empathy empathetic I think very good example is Bill Clinton I feel your pain and nobody but the negotiator would have made that one of their logos real language skills can't stop talking the whole world knows he can't stop talking his biographies nine hundred and something pages long very emotionally expressive I don't know if you watched the Democratic convention he he cried all the way through Hillary's speech it was just really amusing and in his book at one point he says I think it's important of a synthesizing mind I think Oprah is another very good example one one quote from a magazine I read she said the only time that I ever really made a mistake in business I didn't listen to my intuition and real people schools really interested in reading so basically after you take my questionnaire you are get a pie chart this is just one person who happens to be an explorer negotiator and we're all a combination of all these things and many others too of course and then what I did and of course this was to answer the question on chemistry calm why do you fall in love with one person rather than another first had to figure out who you are then I had to watch who you love and so here's what I found I my most recent sample was twenty eight thousand I could people I could have done it with a lot more female explorer goes for the nail explorer male explorer goes for the female explorer so it doesn't matter if you're male or female if you're a high dopamine you want somebody to go adventuring with you and it's not just jumping off mountains it could be going to the theater and to the movies and all the all the clubs or whatever I think here we have a perfect example of two explorers look at that expression in his face and and I was fascinated that she wore yellow there's a lot of at the inauguration there's a lot of studies of color I haven't studied the studies but nevertheless some yellow is a sunlight energy curiosity the high dopamine type female builders go for male builders oh geez male builders go for female builders and those two cases if you're an explorer or builder you're most likely to be attracted to somebody like yourself birds of a feather flock together female directors go from male negotiators Oh rats male directors go for female directors note negotiators and I think Solon Berg and Laurie are a perfect example totally matter of fact I was just doing my job that's the only things that when he was greeted by his hometown he had 63 words that was it not verbally skilled mechanically Engineering spatially genius next to a woman very emotionally expressive very much the negotiator female negotiator goes to the male director male negotiator goes for the female director that I think is Bill Clinton going for Hillary in this case opposites attract so people ask me you know do opposites attract and I say it depends on who you are so I think that love is like a funnel the thing that fun I love is a bit like a funnel time has got to be right you walk into a room you scan the room and you see somebody who looks pretty good and other people who out there out no way too bold too young too fat too thin to pink to green Oh and see what can you talk to the person so looks count and they open their mouth then you hear the accent I have actually had men maintain that they would fall in love with anybody who was beautiful not of the accents no good they would not do it then you very rapidly actually within the first three minutes you can size up people's values and goals their needs their lifestyle they're looking for and many of these things I just simply think that there's lots of breaking points in the beginning of relationship and throughout a relationship but all the way I think you're also unconsciously drawing on what their basic biological personality is in relation to yours so I will I generally in a speech now go into how these various types court I think they're looking for different things I think intimacy means something different to the different types I think they build different types of relationships and marriages I think that any combination can be a good one or a bad one but I think that once you understand who you're dealing with you can reach them better so I what I've got to do next is look at long-term relationships of course on a dating site you're only looking at the beginning of a relationship one thing that made me feel good about that though is that apparently we often make up our mind actually within the first three minutes about somebody and then that sets the trajectory for a very long term I do have some data on long-term relationships sort of but I need to go into that more but I there's no question about that you can maintain relationships long-term this is our most recent study led by Bianca Acevedo our team mate showing that's exactly the same brain region can remain active you can remain in love with somebody for many years I would say two of the things that you might want to do to sustain that romantic love is number one pick the right person that's a real start and then do novel things together any kind of novelty drives up dopamine in the brain and you know if you have regular sex with the person that will also sustain feelings of romantic love sustain the dopamine system and even the oxytocin and vasopressin system so I will just close with this it just reminds me of my main point women tend to get intimacy from face-to-face talking we look at each other we stare at each other with the anchoring gaze and we talk and that's intimacy to women I think it comes from millions of years of holding that baby in front of your face controlling it reprimanding it educating it with words men tend to get intimacy from side by side doing as soon as he looks at him he'll look down they on they can watch the superball all day and not say a single word to each other and find real intimacy from that and I think that that comes from millions of years of sitting behind that bush looking out over the veldt trying to decide where when you're going to hit that Buffalo in the head with a rock you can't be going like this you're going to hit that Buffalo in the head with a run the problem comes of course when you find somebody from a different time thank you so I guess we've got five minutes for questions yes there's a great deal of study on short-term and long-term and the different different reproductive strategies and choices that men and women use I'm actually reading an article about that right now and if you email email me oh it's by David Schmidt and bus I think my memory of of it is that for short-term mating women are more likely to go for the very handsome man then for the one that they call it the the dad and the CAD strategy and every woman is going to be mating short term she wants the best DNA and extremely symmetrical faces and bodies are an indication of a very strong immune system you've been able to fight off all of the diseases and parasites that make you lopsided and so so women are more inclined to go for an extremely a better looking guy if it's going to be a short-term mating because she's going for his DNA I mean not consciously she's going for whatever she's going for consciously that's an issue but for biologically speaking they tend to select and if they're going to go for a long-term strategy for somebody who's going to be a good husband and a good father they're more likely to go for resources women like resources etc and I can't remember some of the there's a lot of data on this David if you were to go to the work of David buss or bu SS or David Schmidt you'd find a lot of articles on that yeah okay homosexual couples were included one thing on the slogan of chemistry calm is come as you are ten percent of people on the site are gay and I looked at gazing as well as straight and it's exactly the same you know we're studying things like curiosity I'm studying things like curiosity doesn't matter whether you're gay or straight whether you're curious or not you're just going to be a curious person gay or straight you're going to be stubborn person whether you're gay or straight you're going to be an agreeable person whether you're gay or straight I'm not really studying traits associated with sexual orientation I'm studying traits associated with basic human nature and so but when I looked at the matching process they an adventurous curious creative gay wanted another adventurous curious creative gay just the way the straights did and a traditional conscientious loyal gay or lesbian wanted something like themselves just the way straights did in fact I would have put gays in my brain scanner also but because this was one of the very first in the world actually the first in the world I wanted to put older people in it too I think this is a brain system like the fear system you're gonna feel romantic love at any age you're gonna feel frightened at any age and so I didn't really even in I mean I think gays who you fall in love may be different who you picked a fall in love with may be different but the feeling you have is exactly the same so I don't single amount somebody else yeah this word yeah so it's really cool that you have chemical and biological theories to actually justify why different people get along but when I hear you talk about it I can't help but hear you know I'm a cancer so of course it worked out with her because she's a Libra or something like that how do you avoid bucketing people and then sort of being too simplistic about you know just like someone you shake hands with okay you immediately tell it what this is a really important to hear me hear me everybody who listens to Google we're talking about scale not buckets these are basic brain systems think in terms of columns you to some degree express the dopamine norepinephrine system to some degree the serotonin system to some degree the testosterone system and some degree the estrogen and oxytocin system we all express all of them these are not buckets so but we express some more than others right not buckets not pockets psychologists use the words dimensions and scales this is why I showed you that pie chart we have some of all of them it's really important for me to get that across to the world because there's a lot of people who will object to that for that very reason they leap from scales to buckets thank you for clarifying yes yes yeah the question is don't people change there's a they do of course they do and well could be but let me let me tell you a little bit about the stability of personality there's a lot of studies of how stable personalities are there's two parts of personality there's character which is everything you grew up to believe and think and do and there's temperament which is the but those traits that are biologically based if you're curious as a kid you tend to be curious in your 20s curious in your 40s curious in their 60s curious in your 80s if you're stubborn as a kid so we're talking about race that have a biological basis now personality can change and as it's studied there's a lot of people who study personality and as it turns out personality is most stable in middle age particularly when you are around people who permit you to be who you are and work in an environment that allows you to be who you are we can all act out of character it's just tiring in fact I had a woman I was making a speech at the Smithsonian afterward she came up to me and she said Helen I think I was man I think I was acting out of character for 15 years with my husband and I said I'm sure I'm sure you were tired too she said yes she was personality is most stable in in middle age we if we do it by test-retest you give the questionnaire to somebody not not this one particularly but psychologists give the test to a group of people and then they give the same people the same test six weeks later six months later six years later to see how stable the answers are over the course of generations even so personality is least stable in teenage probably because you're very dictated by the peer group and trying to fit in every they also say that it's least stable in old age that's surprising because we do think of older people as crusty and set in their ways maybe they're actually becoming who they are I don't know but long short it is we can act out of character but the the data is that people tend to in these biological traits sustain them now with middle age in women levels of estrogen go down unmasking levels of testosterone and you can see that middle-aged women become less agreeable as the estrogen goes down more ambitious as the testosterone is masked testosterone goes down in men starting in their 40s and you can see older men becoming more compassionate so that it does change to some degree but can you really make you know can you really make a curious person uncurious way you can beat them every single time they ask a question but I don't know if they're going to be coming can you really make an empathetic person tough-minded we're talking about biology so there's going to be some variation but not as much as one would expect but I'm middle-aged when I say middle-aged well I would say these days what was middle-age I don't know thirty to ninety yeah yes I've got eleven validity figures without that which is what most psychologists do bike the hand thing like the fact that in my testosterone category I have many more men than women in my estrogen category have many more women than men and in all 39 countries I see that pattern so I've done many psychological tests but now I'm starting to do the biological tests and I've I've collected data on 140 people at Pacific University with a young physiological psychologists Heidi island and and also my statistician and Jonathan rich and both psychologists and we've got data and what they do is they take the questionnaire and I also take we also take blood saliva and urine and we've got data now on 140 people we want to get 200 people before we send it to the lab but one of our problems is all you guys out here taking drugs you know I mean you know I mean to find some people in a university who aren't on ritalin for fun or cocaine or speed or taking anabolic steroids or birth control pills or prozac or paxil or wellbutrin or whatever you know so it's taking us longer than we we hope I had hoped to have that done by the time the book came out but I live in a drug culture and I gotta work around that and then we will go to direct genetic testing and what we will hope to do is genome-wide associations in other word not not only look for single nucleotide polymorphisms like the drd4 gene which is associated with risk-taking but look at the whole matrix of the entire genome because what we're going to end up finding is whole patterns of genetics that I think are going to clump into systems at this beginning but so far I've done the best that science can offer us right now yes the what love is need and love is it's a it's a craving yeah yes I do Oh certain times would not have the craving and then I don't regard it as romantic why but maybe deep attachment but it I actually define that intense romantic love as a craving I mean I regarded I mean I think you can feel deeply attached to somebody and love them very much but in love is dopamine high that's has to do with energy mood swings craving motivation focus etcetera so but anyway in terms of my four groups I would I asked some various questions the group that fell in love most often you could probably guess is the negotiator they're emotionally expressive the group that reported that they fell in love least often was the director because they're very analytical that doesn't mean that they don't feel loved as deeply it means that they are more skeptical and more careful and more self-contained about who they fall in love with I have a girlfriend this is an example of a director I have a girlfriend who said to her husband sweetie you haven't told me that you love me since last month and he said oh I said I loved you last month and nothing's changed so it's a it's a matter of different perspectives more men kill themselves when a relationship is over than women do I actually think that we have an enormous number of misconceptions about love and sex in in our modern world and two basic ones is we have convinced ourselves that women are less sexual than men and we've somehow convinced ourselves that men are less romantic than women and I think they're both wrong well I will wind up then and simply say that people have asked me you know whether this has spoiled it for me and I say um you know you can know every ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake and sit down eat that cake and still feel that joy and I think that knowledge is power I have a broader understanding of the people in Iraq the people up the Amazon River everywhere people love and even though we are beginning to find a good deal of the patterns nature's patterns there will always be magic to love thank you

Channel: Talks at Google

Views: 46,355

Rating: 4.6571426 out of 5

Keywords: talks at google, ted talks, inspirational talks, educational talks, Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type, helen fisher, romance advice, science of romance, personality, personality tests

Id: DsuFRr0Fl-0

Length: 56min 46sec (3406 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2009