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