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Speaker 1: I'm Jessa, and this is deeply human why we do

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Speaker 1: the things we do, and we are gathered here today

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Speaker 1: to talk about love. We spend a lot of time

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Speaker 1: trying to find it, but we might be better off

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Speaker 1: trying to build it, less wiping and more second dates.

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Speaker 1: Can you hear me very well? Okay, I'm going to

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Speaker 1: ask some questions about dating. If you could think of

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Speaker 1: a character in a movie that would serve as a

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Speaker 1: rough model for a good match for me, who would

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Speaker 1: it be? Oh, my goodness, the first thing that comes

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Speaker 1: to mind is Indiana Jones because of the adventurousness. I

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Speaker 1: would totally date Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones. Of course

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Speaker 1: you would. And he's got the physical thing. He's not

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Speaker 1: afraid of getting dirty. He's swashbuckling. That's my mom, Sylvia.

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Speaker 1: She's very a professional in public and kind of goofy

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Speaker 1: when it's just us. We talked on the phone most weeks,

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Speaker 1: sharing little updates about our lives, comparing notes on the

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Speaker 1: world around us. I happened to be on the dating

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Speaker 1: market at the moment, and I've been thinking a lot

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Speaker 1: lately about romantic matching. What it is that attracts people

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Speaker 1: to one another? And fixes them together. I still remember

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Speaker 1: when my mom was dating after my parents divorced. She

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Speaker 1: met her new husband through a personal ad that was

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Speaker 1: online dating, when the Internet was still made out of

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Speaker 1: paper in a previous era of American history, my mom

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Speaker 1: might have been the person to set me up with

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Speaker 1: a guy. But times have changed. Now we're dating online,

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Speaker 1: which is seriously expanded the dating pool, and we're marrying later,

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Speaker 1: which means we're treading water longer. The contemporary dat sifts

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Speaker 1: through way more candidates to find her special somebody, and

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Speaker 1: as we'll learn, the numbers matter more than you might think.

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Speaker 1: When you looked at me little, did you have any

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Speaker 1: idea of the sort of partner that I'd end up with? Like?

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Speaker 1: Did you think about that about me dating? When when

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Speaker 1: I was like, I think a parent always thinks that way,

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Speaker 1: Even when I took a look at the four year old,

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Speaker 1: this was a curious mind. And I think when I

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Speaker 1: think about your dating, I can only imagine that it

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Speaker 1: would be someone who would be equally curious. I think

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Speaker 1: that being a physical person, the physical strength of the

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Speaker 1: person you're with actually matters. What do you mean, like

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Speaker 1: like someone I can't win in an arm wrestling match. Yes,

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Speaker 1: someone who could pick you up and twirl you around. Okay,

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Speaker 1: just for the record, I'm like a hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: five pounds and five tents. That narrows it down. There

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Speaker 1: are a lot of guys out there like that, though.

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Speaker 1: Do you know what Tinder is? Do you know what

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Speaker 1: the app tender? Next time we have lunch, do you

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Speaker 1: want to like drive my Tinder app and you can

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Speaker 1: swipe left or right and you can tell me, Oh, sure,

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Speaker 1: that would be kind of fun. We're looking for a

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Speaker 1: companion for chemistry, a partner for good times and for bad,

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Speaker 1: for Netflix and for chilling, someone with whom were really compatible.

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Speaker 1: But what exactly is compatibility and how much of it

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Speaker 1: can we expect to find in a partner. Years ago,

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Speaker 1: I was talking with my best friend Jacqueline about this stuff,

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Speaker 1: and our exchange has haunted me ever since. She told

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Speaker 1: me someone we both know was going through this big breakup,

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Speaker 1: and Jacqueline asked him what happened, and he told her

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Speaker 1: he and his girl had really tried to make it work.

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Speaker 1: He said, man, we were so close to being a fit.

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Speaker 1: We were, but we just couldn't do him. Not long afterwards,

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Speaker 1: another friend of ours announced that he'd asked his girlfriend

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Speaker 1: the big question, the one posed on bended knee. When

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Speaker 1: Jacqueline asked him, ah, so how do you know she

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Speaker 1: was the one? He responded, We just fit. We match

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Speaker 1: like on everything. Two couples, both feeling well matched and

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Speaker 1: the exact same grade, flunked one guy out of dating

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Speaker 1: and landed the other in a second ring suburb with

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Speaker 1: two kids and a joint checking account. So how good

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Speaker 1: is good enough? How much can we ask for? What

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Speaker 1: should we settle for? I spoke to someone who studies

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Speaker 1: choice and decision making to figure out exactly how people

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Speaker 1: set their standards. Barry, Yeah, do you mind if I

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Speaker 1: call you Berry? Not at all. The expert with whom

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Speaker 1: we are now on a first name basis is Barry Schwartz,

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Speaker 1: a professor of psychology at the Business School at the

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Speaker 1: University of California, Berkeley. He's particularly interested in how you

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Speaker 1: behave when you're in environments where you have a bunch

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Speaker 1: of options, like the serial aisle and the supermarkets, say

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Speaker 1: or you know, tender. Intuitively, most of us are likely

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Speaker 1: to think, Hey, more options to choose from means I'll

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Speaker 1: be more likely to get just what I'm looking for.

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Speaker 1: But as Barry explains in his book The Paradox of Choice,

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Speaker 1: that's not always the case. Most Western industrial societies believe

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Speaker 1: that since freedom is good and choice is essential to freedom,

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Speaker 1: that choice is good, and that the more choice people have,

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Speaker 1: the more freedom they have and the better off they are.

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Speaker 1: Choice is good. But there can be too much of

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Speaker 1: a good thing. And when you give people too much

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Speaker 1: of a good thing, instead of being liberated by it,

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Speaker 1: they get paralyzed. They can't pull the trigger. Think of

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Speaker 1: your local grocery store with dozens and dozens of serials

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Speaker 1: on offer. Barry says that the process of sifting through

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Speaker 1: so many options can actually make us less satisfied with

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Speaker 1: whatever we've put in our cards. His thinking goes likeness.

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Speaker 1: While we're comparing all the potential choices, we're making note

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Speaker 1: of the best features of every option. Oh hey, this

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Speaker 1: box of frosted puff whatever is is on sale. Oh

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Speaker 1: but this one is organic. Ah, but this one has

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Speaker 1: so much niacin. I love nias. At the end of

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Speaker 1: the process, nothing can compare to the super breakfast you've

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Speaker 1: collaged in your imagination by combining the best bits of

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Speaker 1: each box. So even if you do end up making

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Speaker 1: a pretty good selection, you just don't feel that good.

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Speaker 1: And this isn't just about cereal. This applies to big

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Speaker 1: life choices too. One of the things we have to

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Speaker 1: fight against is adaptation. Barry has been studying this stuff

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Speaker 1: for forty five years. You have good experiences and they're wonderful,

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Speaker 1: they're spectacular for a while, and then they just become

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Speaker 1: your life. And as normal keeps going up, experiences that

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Speaker 1: are really going to knock your socks off have to

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Speaker 1: keep going up to the socks stay on, And I

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Speaker 1: don't know what you can do to get somebody's socks off.

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Speaker 1: So maybe the problem is that I've dated too many

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Speaker 1: great guys. It's weird to say it, but I don't

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Speaker 1: think that's a ridiculous idea. I've been lucky enough to

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Speaker 1: know and love some awesome dudes, and I've sometimes wondered

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Speaker 1: if I had been forced to marry one of them,

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Speaker 1: could we have made a go of it. I bet

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Speaker 1: we could have pulled off a workable partnership. But of course,

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Speaker 1: workable isn't really the standard we're going for these days,

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Speaker 1: is it. We want to lose our socks, We want socklessness.

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Speaker 1: Barry is quick to point out there's very little empirical

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Speaker 1: evidence on this, but still I can't, for the life

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Speaker 1: of me, see why having two cereals to choose from

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Speaker 1: and the grocery is any different from having two hundred

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Speaker 1: romantic partners to choose from on a dating site. It

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Speaker 1: seems to me that all the problems that having all

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Speaker 1: these options present in the retail domain, they present, perhaps

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Speaker 1: even to a greater degree, in the romantic domain, because

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Speaker 1: the stakes are so much higher. Barry told me about

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Speaker 1: a pretty interesting study on dating choice as it played

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Speaker 1: out in the world of speed dating. If you're unfamiliar,

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Speaker 1: speed dating started in the late nineties, and it goes

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Speaker 1: like this. An organizer gather there's a bunch of people

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Speaker 1: in a room to set them up on tiny dates

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Speaker 1: only a few minutes long. A bell rings to indicate

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Speaker 1: when you're supposed to move on to your next day,

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Speaker 1: to the next, and at the end of the night,

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Speaker 1: you submit a little sheet of paper to the organizers

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Speaker 1: to indicate who you'd like to see again. If they

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Speaker 1: also pick you, then you're set up for a real

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Speaker 1: date at normal speed. What's interesting is how the number

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Speaker 1: and range of potential daters in the room can affect

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Speaker 1: the number of matches. A two thousand eleven article and

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Speaker 1: a publication called Biology letter Is reported findings from a

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Speaker 1: study of eighty four speed dating groups. Researchers discovered that

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Speaker 1: the daters who had a wider variety of people to

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Speaker 1: choose from picked fewer people than want to see again,

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Speaker 1: and when they had a lot of really varied choices,

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Speaker 1: they were more likely to pick no one at all.

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Speaker 1: And arguably this is because with everybody you see, you know,

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Speaker 1: the scarce person is pretty nice, but that other person

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Speaker 1: was funnier, and that other person was a little bit

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Speaker 1: better looking, and that other person seemed to be a

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Speaker 1: better listener, and so every attractive feature of everybody reduces

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Speaker 1: the attractiveness of everybody else. Confession time I tried speed dating.

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Speaker 1: Once I liked a guy with a pink dress shirt

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Speaker 1: who did not indicate liking me back. If you're listening now,

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Speaker 1: pink shirt guy, this is the glamorous podcasting life you

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Speaker 1: could have been a part of. One of the most

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Speaker 1: fascinating recent revelations about love and dating comes from the

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Speaker 1: work of Dr Helen Fisher, a researcher, a tier and

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Speaker 1: a public figure who spent much of her career studying

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Speaker 1: how we make romantic choices. Here's the study I read

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Speaker 1: that blew my mind. Dr Fisher recruited a bunch of

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Speaker 1: people who were passionately in love and put each of

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Speaker 1: them into an fMRI machine. While inside, each participant was

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Speaker 1: shown a picture of the person I loved and pictures

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Speaker 1: of somebody else as a control image. The machine tracked

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Speaker 1: brain activity throughout the session, and at the end of

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Speaker 1: her research, Helen was confident that she'd identified exactly which

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Speaker 1: parts of the human brain are involved in romantic love.

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Speaker 1: I've actually seen these regions modeled in three D, even

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Speaker 1: hopped in an fMRI machine myself to have my own

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Speaker 1: brain scanned. And let me tell you, love is not pretty.

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Speaker 1: It's a curving set of nabby, mangled, sort of claw

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Speaker 1: like things clenched deep inside the darkness of our skulls.

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Speaker 1: Nobody gets out of love alive. I mean, we're trying

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Speaker 1: to win life's greatest prize, which is a mating partner.

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Speaker 1: Helen talks with her hands. She is inexhaustibly excited about

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Speaker 1: what she does. I had thought that the hardest thing

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Speaker 1: I would do with my career would be to figure

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Speaker 1: out the brain circuitry of romantic love and attachment. But

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, it's actually not. The question was

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Speaker 1: why do you fall for him or her? Why are

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Speaker 1: you drawn to a particular person? And there's all kinds

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Speaker 1: of cultural reasons. I mean, we tend to fall in

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Speaker 1: love with somebody from the same socio economic background, same

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Speaker 1: general level of intelligence, same general level of good look,

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Speaker 1: same religious and social values, same reproductive goals, same economic goals,

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Speaker 1: your child. It certainly plays a role. Timing is important,

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Speaker 1: Proximity is important, and I would say at my age,

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Speaker 1: lighting can help you, know. So I began to think

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Speaker 1: to myself, well, maybe basic biology can pull you naturally

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Speaker 1: towards one person rather than another. There's four basic brain

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Speaker 1: systems that each one of them is linked with a

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Speaker 1: constellation of personality race, the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen system.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna slow a role here because this part is important.

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Speaker 1: Those four substances Helen mentioned dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen,

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Speaker 1: They're in all of our bodies and they act on

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Speaker 1: systems in our brain, affecting the way we feel, learn, think,

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Speaker 1: and act. Helen started studying the available research about how

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Speaker 1: a person's temperament is to some extent shaped by these

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Speaker 1: four brain systems. People who are testosterone dominant, for example,

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Speaker 1: may be more prone to skepticism, People who are serotonin

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Speaker 1: dominant tend to be more religious, estrogen people may be

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Speaker 1: more verbal, and dopamine dominant people are more novelty seeking.

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Speaker 1: Helen wanted to know are there dating patterns that emerge

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Speaker 1: between these four types? How are they attracted to one another? First,

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Speaker 1: she said about designing questionnaire that could allow her to

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Speaker 1: categorize daters into their biological types. I collected all the

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Speaker 1: data from hormone studies and neurotransmitter studies and medical and

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Speaker 1: biological studies to make the questionnaire, and then I went

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Speaker 1: on to do two brain scanning studies to prove that

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Speaker 1: this questionnaire actually measures what it does. She also linked

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Speaker 1: up with match dot com and chemistry dot com, big

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Speaker 1: online dating sites, which gave her access to a huge

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Speaker 1: number of active daters. The users agreed to take her

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Speaker 1: temperament questionnaire, and then they set about matching and dating

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Speaker 1: each other, and she took note of who linked up

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Speaker 1: with whom. More than fourteen million people in forty countries

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Speaker 1: have taken Helen's questionnaire, I recently joined their ranks, answering

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Speaker 1: her fifty six questions. On one of those agreed disagree skills,

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Speaker 1: I find unpredictable situations accelerating. Yes, taking care of my

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Speaker 1: possessions is a high priority for me. I dropped my

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Speaker 1: phone every time I stand up. That's a strong disagree.

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Speaker 1: I think consistent routines keep life orderly and relaxing. No,

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Speaker 1: not so much. My answers classify me as driven by

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Speaker 1: the estrogen system. According to Helen, people like me verbal social,

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Speaker 1: inclined towards monogamy, conflict diverse, like to date test uster

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Speaker 1: our own people, logical, confident skeptics. Oh come on, really,

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Speaker 1: that's just oh hell, that is totally true. However, the

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Speaker 1: seratonin camp planners who value tradition prefer to date within

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Speaker 1: their own ranks, as do the novelty and adventure seeking

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Speaker 1: dopamine folks, who presumably take their candle at dinners on

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Speaker 1: the wing of a plane toasting Chardonnay cup with red bull. Yeah. Okay.

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Speaker 1: Going back to Barry Schwartz, our choice expert, he says

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Speaker 1: there are two distinct approaches that people might use to

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Speaker 1: guide their choosing. There are some people who, whenever they

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Speaker 1: have a choice to make, they want the best. We

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Speaker 1: call people like this maximizers. There are other people who

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Speaker 1: are not so concerned about the best. We call these

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Speaker 1: people satisficers, and it's a term that was coined by

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Speaker 1: a psychologist named Herb Simon half a century ago. The

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Speaker 1: thing about being a satisfy sir is you don't have

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Speaker 1: to examine every option. You examine options until you find

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Speaker 1: one that meets your standards. Then you stop looking and

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Speaker 1: you are satisfied with what you've gotten. Maximizers want to

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Speaker 1: make sure to score the best possible option. This is

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Speaker 1: a friend who will tour a thousand apartments before signing

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Speaker 1: a lease. Satisficers, meanwhile, have a specific standard in mind.

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Speaker 1: They wanted two bedroom and the hardward floor is a

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Speaker 1: closet big enough to record a podcast in, and as

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Speaker 1: soon as she finds a place that meets those requirements,

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Speaker 1: she's ready to move in. Satisficers aren't necessarily less choosy.

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Speaker 1: They might have a lot of boxes to check, but

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Speaker 1: generally it's the maximizers who find themselves spending a lot

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Speaker 1: of time and energy on their deliberations. Intuitively. Most people

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Speaker 1: think you should make the little decisions as a satisficer, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: this works, I'll take it, and the big decisions as

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Speaker 1: a maximizer. I'm going to spend the time and energy

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Speaker 1: on this to find the very best. But Barry says

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Speaker 1: they're wrong. You know, by the time you find your

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Speaker 1: romantic partner, you'll be in your mid fifties, and uh,

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Speaker 1: that's not the right way to go through life. In

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Speaker 1: addition to which, since we're talking about Roman Tick relationships,

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Speaker 1: there's a huge mistake I think that people make, which

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Speaker 1: is that the challenge when you're seeking a romantic partner

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Speaker 1: is one of discovery find the right person. And I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's really about discovery. I think it's about creation.

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Speaker 1: You find a compatible person and then you build a

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Speaker 1: great relationship. It's worth noting here, and Barry agrees that

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Speaker 1: we don't have to partner at all. Life has some

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Speaker 1: other pretty great prizes. But Barry has a point. If

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Speaker 1: we do want to find a companion, it'd be nice

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Speaker 1: to find that person while we've got a lot of

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Speaker 1: time left to pack around together. I know that you're

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Speaker 1: married for fifty two years as of three days ago. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm late with the happy anniversary. So how did Barry

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Speaker 1: meet his wife? mRNA? There's some hyper rational decision matrix. Well,

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Speaker 1: so she's probably going to be mad at me for

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Speaker 1: revealing all this stuff. But we became best friends in

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Speaker 1: eighth grade and I was romantically interested in her from

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Speaker 1: the get go, and she was not romantically interested in me,

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Speaker 1: and it took a lot of persistence on my part

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Speaker 1: to get her to change her mind. When you were

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Speaker 1: doing that, are you using methods of satisficers or maximizers?

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Speaker 1: I watched fifteen years old. Give me a break. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what the hell I was doing as to

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Speaker 1: where I ought to be looking for my partner. Barry

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Speaker 1: is not impressed by the app I happen to be using.

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Speaker 1: You are way way too good to be needing to

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Speaker 1: use Tinder. Let me say, I'll take it. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: put that you don't have to do if it's cool

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Speaker 1: with you want my endorsements, Barry? Can I put that

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Speaker 1: on my Tinder account? I'm doing it for all if

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Speaker 1: you think it will help. I don't know. I think

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Speaker 1: it's funny, I asked Talent Fisher, our expert on love

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Speaker 1: and brain systems, who we should point out still does

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Speaker 1: work for match dot com. If there are any best

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Speaker 1: practices for online dating. The brain is not well built

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Speaker 1: to go through a hundred different choices. There's a sweet

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Speaker 1: spot in the brain between five and nine, and after

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Speaker 1: that you just end up choosing nobody. So if you're

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Speaker 1: on a dating site after you've met nine people, stop

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Speaker 1: and get to know at least one person. Better think

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Speaker 1: of reasons to say yes, no, no, okay, all knows?

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Speaker 1: So far, so far we've had one yes and like

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Speaker 1: six or seven knows. Remember how at the beginning I

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Speaker 1: asked my mom if she wanted to drive my tender account. Well,

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Speaker 1: here she is behind the wheel. Ah, he doesn't look

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Speaker 1: adventurous enough. And can you tell that from his expression

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Speaker 1: or from what he's wearing or what he's in an office?

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Speaker 1: We're in an office, I know, but I know we're adventurous.

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Speaker 1: Mm hmm. This is not a guy who I would

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Speaker 1: have paused on. But I think you should sit right because, okay,

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Speaker 1: it's a match. Do you know what that means? Mom?

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Speaker 1: That his dad is swiping from his tender accounted? He

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Speaker 1: he's sliped right on me too. I admit that watching

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Speaker 1: my parents divorce has probably made me a little gun shy.

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Speaker 1: They're both kind, sensitive people, and it hurt to see

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Speaker 1: them so damn sad, which made it seem all the

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Speaker 1: more important to choose my own match carefully. But I

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Speaker 1: don't want to set a standard for compatibility so high

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Speaker 1: that it's impossible to meet, or worse, makes me an

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Speaker 1: ungenerous partner always disappointed with her guy. So Barry's idea

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Speaker 1: that compatibility isn't only something you find, it's something you

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Speaker 1: create is compelling. How good is good enough? Isn't a

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Speaker 1: question to retire after you swipe right, or even after

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Speaker 1: you like it and put a ring on it. How

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Speaker 1: good can this get? Can be asked every day when

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Speaker 1: deciding who makes the pre dawn pot of coffee, how

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Speaker 1: the bills are paid, how the compliments are paid, when

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Speaker 1: to relent, when to insist on a difficult conversation instead

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Speaker 1: of turning off the light to fall asleep alone in

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Speaker 1: the same bed. I bet there are many potential relationships

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Speaker 1: that any two people could build together. Their decisions in

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Speaker 1: the first morning they spend together reverberate through the afternoon.

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Speaker 1: The decisions of their youth shape the partnership of later years.

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Speaker 1: Choice is not a lever we pull once, It's a

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Speaker 1: wheel that's always turning. Okay, here is my revised tender profile.

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Speaker 1: Tessa thirty nine design features five ten musician and writer

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Speaker 1: half Puerto Rican Water. I like science and milk, chocolate

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Speaker 1: and kindness, and I'm looking for a charismatic, smart, trustworthy

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Speaker 1: dude who's mostly but not completely grown up. I am

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Speaker 1: officially endorsed by Dr Barry Schwartz. Okay, so Deeply Human

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Speaker 1: kicks off of the bang big ideas about love. It's

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Speaker 1: not just who you pick but what you make together.

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Speaker 1: So if you're expecting to fall hard for someone, you

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Speaker 1: might have to help dig the hole. So happy shoveling.

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Speaker 1: In our next episode, the topic on deck is pain.

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Speaker 1: We'll be delving into why we hurt, why some of

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Speaker 1: us can't stop, and how pain might shape some of

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Speaker 1: the most important parts of our lives. Deeply Human is

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Speaker 1: a BBC World Service and American Public Media co production

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Speaker 1: with iHeartMedia. Until next time, Curiously, Yours, Dessa,