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