Big Think Interview With Helen Fisher

http://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-helen-fisher
Question: What are the three brain systems for love?
Helen Fisher: I do think that weve evolved three distinctly different brain systems
for love. One is the sex drive, the craving for sexual gratification. The second
one is romantic love, that elation, the giddiness, the euphoria, the obsession, the
craving of passionate, obsessive love. And the third is attachment. That sense
of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.
And rather than being stages, these three brain systems can operate, really in
any kind of combination. I mean, you could walk into a party, youre ready to fall
in love, you talked to somebody, they say just the perfect joke and theyre the
right size and shape and height and background, and boom. You trigger the
brain system for romantic love. And then, once youve fallen in love with them,
you feel very sexually drawn to them. Or, you can start out with a sexual
relationship with somebody and then fall in love with them. Or, you can know
somebody for many years. Maybe its a boyfriend of a friend of yours and youre
married to somebody else and then times change, people become available and
suddenly youve fallen in love with somebody who youve had a deep and very
nice friendship with. So, any one of these brain systems can happen first;
attachment, romantic love, or the sex drive.
Question: What does the brain look like when its in love?
Helen Fisher: Everybodys always wondered what happens in the brain when
youve fallen in love, and we all know actually how you feel when you fall in love.
But actually, what happens in the brain is, a tiny little factory near the base of the
brain called the ventral tegmental area become active, and in some particular
cells, called the A10 cells, they begin to make dopamine. Dopamine is a natural
stimulant. And from the ventral tegmental area its sent too many brain regions,
particularly the reward system; the brain system for wanting, for craving, for
seeking, for addiction, for motivation and in this case, the motivation to win lifes
greatest prize, which is a good mating partner.
Question: Can casual sex trigger love?
Helen Fisher: I think that all three of these brain systems can interact with one
another, particularly when you have sex with somebody. Any kind of sexual
stimulation of the genitals triggers the dopamine system in the brain and can
push you over that threshold into falling in love with that person. And in fact, with
orgasm, theres a real flood of oxytocin and vasopressin, other chemicals in the
brain associated with the feeling of deep attachment. So, casual sex is really
never casual unless youre so drunk you cant remember it; something happens.

As a matter of fact, in one study of over a thousand people, over 50% of both
men and women reported that their first kiss of somebody was sort of the kiss of
death. They had begun quite attracted to a person sexually and romantically and
then when they kissed them, it was so horrible for them that it turned them off
completely. So, casual sex is just plain old not casual. Something can happen.
You can either fall madly in love with this person, or you can begin a deep sense
of attachment to them.
As a matter of fact, Ive been working with a graduate student named Justin
Garcia, and he and I believe that people go into hookups, or one-night stands
hoping to trigger a longer relationship. And in fact, in a study that he did of 515
men and women in a college in the northeast, he asked them why they went into
this hookup; this one-night stand. Fifty percent of women and 52% of men
reported that they went into the sexual experience hoping to trigger a longer
relationship, and in fact, 1/3 of them did.
So, consciously, when people go into the one-night stands, they probably arent
thinking, oh, Im going to trigger the brain system, or the dopamine system in the
brain and make this person fall in love with me, but somehow, intuitively, they
know that sex is powerful and that it can trigger powerful feelings of love.
Question: Can we learn to love people that off the bat might not seem like theyre
for us?
Helen Fisher: Yeah. I think you can learn to love people who you absolutely
would reject if you saw them on paper, or even looked at them in a picture
because people grow on you. And if they fit within your love map, your
unconscious list of what youre looking for in a partner at all, the data shows that
the more you see them, the more you like them, and the more you regard them
as similar to yourself.
So, thats one of the big problems in courtship is we give up too fast. We
overweight what we dont like about a person and dont proceed to overlook that
and move on and find out what we really like. As a matter of fact, I often say to
people who are dating, Stop looking for whats wrong with this person and start
looking for whats right, and then focus on that.
Question: Is everyone born to love?
Helen Fisher: In my reading, I have found that occasionally there is a human
being that has never felt intense romantic love. I personally have met two people
who had never felt it until their mid-50s. Both of them were happily married, one
man, one woman, both of them had children with their partner; both had built a
very nice social life, and personal life, and good marriage. But they had never
felt that intense romantic love. And both of them actually said the same thing to
me. They said, I would go to something like Romeo and Juliet, and I just didnt

understand why people would be killing themselves over this. And then both of
them fell in love with somebody in their mid-50s. On both cases, it was not their
spouse. In both cases, they chose not to pursue the relationship with the other
person, and stayed with their partner with whom they were feeling deep
attachment. So, there are people who have never felt romantic love, but the vast
majority of us do.
I and my colleagues have put 49 people who were madly in love into a brain
scanner, 17 who had just fallen love, 15 who had just been rejected in love, and
15 who reported that they were still in love after an average of 21 years of
marriage. And in all cases, we found activity in parts of the brain that are so
primitive, so primordial, so old. As a matter of fact, I think that no only all human
beings, or almost all human beings, around the world love and always have. But
I think that other animals too fall in love also. I mean, you can see a fox in the
beginning of the mating season. He will focus on a particular female. Hes got
intense energy, the way you do when you fall in love. He doesnt eat or sleep.
Hes constantly nuzzling up against her and licking her face and patting her body.
If you saw this on a park bench in New York City, you would think that this was
romantic love. And in two species theyve actually measured some of what
happens in the brain during that moment of attraction and you see the same
dopamine activity. Different parts of the brain, but you see an elevation of
dopamine activity in other animals the way you do in people.
So, we inherited the drive to love. It is a drive. Its a basic, not even mammalian,
you see it in birds. As a matter of fact, Darwin described love at first sight among
two ducks.
Question: What is love?
Helen Fisher: Love is a lot of things to a lot of different people, but I do think that
we all have inherited these three basic brain systems for mating and
reproduction; the sex drive, romantic love, and deep feelings of attachment. But
when you take a look around the world at world poetry, I think poetry is a very
good litmus test. I think poetry is a very good indication of the emotions. And all
over the world you see the same descriptions of romantic love. For example, the
first thing that happens when you fall in love is a person takes on what I call
special meaning. As George Bernard Shaw said, He said, Love consists of
overestimating the differences between one woman and another. And indeed,
we do. And then you focus on this person. That persons car is different from
any other car in the parking lot. The street they live on is different, the music they
like is different. Everything about them is special and you focus on it. In fact,
before I began putting people into the brain scanner, I would ask them, what do
you not like about your sweetheart? And they would list what they didnt like and
then they would sweep that aside and just focus on what they did like.
Another basic characteristic of romantic love is intense energy. You can walk all

night and talk til dawn, real mood swings, elation when things are going well,
crashing into terrible despair when you dont get an email, or dont get a call, real
possessiveness, its called mate guarding among animals. Most people dont
care if theyre casually sleeping with somebody. They dont care if that person is
sleeping with somebody else, but when youre in love, you really care.
But the three main characteristics of romantic love are: intense craving for
emotional union with this person. You like to sleep with them, but real emotional
union with them, and intense motivation to win them, what people will do when
theyre in love. And last, but no least, obsessive thinking. You cant stop thinking
about this person. Somebody is camping in your head. Its also quite
uncontrollable. Stendahl once said, Love is like a fever. It comes and goes
quite independently of the will. And indeed it does. It just visits you. The brain
system becomes triggered and youre off to the races.
Question: Does passion diminish after a certain amount of years?
Helen Fisher: I think that most people believe that romantic love dies after a
certain number of weeks, months, or years. But my colleagues and I have
actually proved that wrong. The first author on our most recent brain scanning
study is Bianca Casavedo. And Bianca, and the rest of us, wanted to see what
happens in the brain among people who report that they are still in love, not
loving, but in love with somebody after an average of 21 years of marriage. And
so, in New York, we put 17 people who said they were still in love with their
spouse into the brain scanner and we found exactly the same activity in this tiny
little factory near the base of the brain that we found among those who had just
fallen madly in love in the ventral tegmental area.
So, you can sustain romantic love long-term. But we did find one difference.
When you just fallen in love, we find activity in a brain region associated with
anxiety, and among those who were in love long-term, that has disappeared, and
instead you now feel a sense of calm. And so what I think is going on among
people who are in love long-term is they still want that man to come home for
dinner and they still want to sit down and talk about the day and they still want to
go on that vacation together, and they want to share their lives, theyre not
thinking of divorce, they feel that sense of romance and tingling sensation. But if
they dont get a phone call at lunchtime, they dont crumble in a corner and cry.
That anxiety is replaced with calm.
Question: What are the differences in relationships that start in high school
versus later in life relationships?
Helen Fisher: I havent studied the differences in the brain between those who
met in high school and those who met later in life. But I do think that those who
met in high school have some wonderful advantages. And that is that they know
each others parents, they knew the dog that she grew up with and his younger

sister, and the fact that he was a high school star and that she was wonderful at
the Jitter Bug, at dancing. You know, they have all those memories that are
wonderful. This is one of the reasons I think that, theres a real trend right now of
older people divorcing and then finding their first love on the Internet and falling
in love with somebody who they really were in love with in high school. And they
do have that advantage of this understanding of the house they grew up in, the
kind of car that he drove, etc., etc.; the kinds of things that really bring continuity.
As a matter of fact, Ive interviewed some of these people who had reconnected
much later. And one of them was a couple, they were probably both in their 60s,
and I asked him whether she had changed at all. And he said, Not at all. And
then I saw photographs of the two of them in high school standing in front of a
Christmas tree and I could see them clearly now. And they were so dramatic I
mean they both gained 100 pounds, they were so dramatically different. But
once you get a vision of who this person is, if you can hold on to this, you will
create a happy relationship.
Question: What are the similarities and differences between how men and
women define intimacy?
Helen Fisher: Im working with the dating site, Chemistry.com, which is a division
of Match.com. And Ive put a questionnaire on that dating site and 5 million
people have taken that questionnaire. Any way, about 12,000 take that
questionnaire every week. And so, about a month ago, I put an intimacy scale
onto that dating site to see whether there were some gender differences, and
with the different types of personalities regarded intimacy differently. And I found
no gender difference on two questions. Ninety-five percent of both men and
women agreed that they felt it was extremely intimate to go off and do something
adventurous with their partner. And 95% agreed, men and women, that having a
deep conversation about the relationship was intimate.
So, Im beginning to think that we dont understand men anymore than we
understand women. As a matter of fact, men fall in love faster than women do
because they are so visual. Men are more dependent on their girlfriends and
wives because theyve got fewer intimate connections with other men. Men are
two and a half times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship is over,
and men are more likely to remarry after a spouse has died or deserted them.
So, I think as we come to understand women, I think we are also going to come
to understand men.
Theres one difference in intimacy between men and women that I think comes
out of our evolutionary past. Women tend to get intimacy out of face-to-face
talking. We swivel until we are right in front of each other, we lock eyes with what
is called the anchoring gaze, and we talk. And we regard that as intimate.
And men tend to sit side-by-side and look straight forward and not look at each

other at all and regard that as intimate. And I think they both come from our
evolutionary past. I think womens intimacy comes from millions of years of
holding their baby in front of their face, cajoling it, reprimanding it, educating it
with words. And so words and face-to-face contact is intimate to women.
Whereas, I think for millions of years, men had to sit behind a bush on the
grasslands of Africa and keep their eye on the grasslands hoping a zebra is
going to come by so that they can hit it in the head with a rock and they cant be
sitting there talking with somebody like this. Theyve got to talk while theyre
looking forward. And I think this can complicate relationships. Youll see a man
and a woman on a park bench and the man is talking looking straight ahead, and
the women has moved every single part of her body around in order to have eye
contact.
As a matter of fact, Ive had various men in my life who talk to me with their eyes
completely shut and I think its because its too intimate for them. I mean, for
millions of years men faced their enemies, they really sat side-by-side with
friends. So, one of the things that I do with a man to make him comfortable is sit
side-by-side with him and look straight ahead; particularly if Im going to have a
difficult conversation with him.
Question: Is it true that men have a propensity for cheating more than women?
Helen Fisher: Ive looked at adultery in 42 societies and you see in every single
place, even in cultures where you can get your head chopped of for it. So,
theres every reason to think that weve got some biological propensities for it.
Now, people say, no, to adultery. We dont have to be adulterous, but its
remarkable how many people are. And the newest data that in people under age
40, women are just as adulterous as men. And so, I suspect that the last 10,000
years of keeping women in the kitchen and the home has and the very strict
rules against female adultery in many societies has curbed female adultery so
that we think that only men do it. But the bottom line is that every single time
theres a man who is sleeping around, he is quite often sleeping around with a
woman. And so just doing the math you begin to assume that women are
probably just as adulterous as men.
But I actually think that men and women are in a sort of collusion about this. Men
want to think that men are more adulterous than women and women want men to
think that men are more adulterous than women. So, weve got ourselves
believing that men are more adulterous.
Theres a great deal of data over the last, oh the data goes back to the 1920s
anyway, that men are more adulterous. And whats interesting is that the degree
of adultery hasnt changed a great deal. Today, the indication is, for the general
population, about 1/3 of men will be adulterous at some point during their
marriage, and about 15% of women will be adulterous at some point during their

marriage. But as I say, among people under the age of 40, it seems to be the
same amount for women as well as men.
Question: Do you agree with phrase, once a cheater, always a cheater?
Helen Fisher: I dont think a person is always a cheater. No, theres always
variations here. I study personality types. And the kind of person who is very
expressive of the dopamine system, I call them the explorer, they tend to be
novelty seeking, risk taking, curious, creative, spontaneously generous. Theyre
the kind who will walk into a bar and buy everybody a drink, irreverent; they dont
follow the rules unless they make sense for them, quite liberal, very adaptable
and flexible. And I would guess that this particular personality type would be
more inclined to adultering.
However, when you find the right person, I would guess theres a lot of people
who have been adulterous for a good deal of their lives and then they get tired of
it. They find the really the right person for them, the kind of person that will get
off the couch and go straight to Saudi Arabia on vacation, or straight to Ireland for
a particular song festival, or they finally find somebody who can play as hard and
fast and is a sexual as they are, or they find somebody who they respect so
much that they dont want to risk it. I do think people change.
You know, some people have a tendency towards alcoholism and they give up
drinking. Some people certainly have a tendency towards smoking cigarettes
and they give up cigarettes. Some people succeed in giving up gambling, or
losing weight. We do all kinds of thing with our lives that we biologically might no
be inclined to do. And I think adultery is one. People can give up adultery.
However, I do think that this evolved, this restlessness in long relationships
evolved and we do, as a species have a tendency towards adultery.
Question: Why are we attracted to some people and not others?
Helen Fisher: Nobody knows. This is what we do know. This is what
psychologists know. They do know that we tend to fall in love with somebody
from the same socioeconomic background, same ethnic background, same
general level on intelligence, same general of good looks, same religious and
social values. We tend to be drawn to somebody who can give us the lifestyle
that we are looking for. Our childhood certainly plays a role, and we are now
beginning to find some biological things that draw you to some people rather than
others. New data shows that women with a particular immune system are drawn
to men who have an opposite immune system. So, theres a lot of factors.
Timing plays a role, proximity plays a role. Theres many factors in who you love,
who you choose.
But I began to I mean, you can walk into a room and everybody is from your
background, same general level of intelligence, same general level of

attractiveness and you dont fall in love with all of them. So, why is it that were
almost chemically pulled to one person rather than another? So, I wanted to see
if I could figure out the role of basic body chemistry. And so I looked through a
whole lot of biological data and theres a lot of chemicals in the brain, but most of
those keep the eyes blinking, or help with swallowing, or keep the heart beating,
etc. Not many of them are linking with personality traits.
Four chemicals, actually six chemicals are related to personality traits. So, I
wrote down on separate sheets of paper all of those traits associated with the
dopamine system, the serotonin system, the testosterone system, and the last
being the estrogen and the oxytocin system. And then I decided I would create a
questionnaire to see to what degree you express these four basic biological
systems. We all express all of them, but we express some more than others.
And then I would watch on this dating site, Chemistry.com, and see not only what
youre chemistry was, but who you were naturally drawn to. And as it turns out,
people who are very expressive of the dopamine system go for people like
themselves. If you are high energy, very curious, have a lot of interests, love
novelty, willing to take risks to do new things. You want somebody like yourself.
And Its not just jumping off mountains. I mean, its somebody that will go to the
opera with you, the theater with you, art exhibits with you, etc.
So, the explorer, what I call the explorer, the high dopamine type, tends to go
for people like themselves. So does the high serotonin type. I call these people
the builder, Plato called them the guardian. Thats a better term. These
people are cautious, but not fearful. Theyre conventional, traditional, they are
calm, social, theyre very managerial, theyre very thorough, orderly,
conscientious, and loyal. They want somebody like themselves. Serotonin goes
with serotonin. But the last two types, people who are expressive of the
testosterone system go for people who are expressive of the estrogen system.
But the last two types, those of who are expressive of the testosterone system,
both men and women, tend to be attracted to those who are their opposites;
those who are expressive of the estrogen system. I think a very good example is
Hillary and Bill Clinton. She is, I think, very expressive of the testosterone
system; direct, decisive, tough-minded, certainly very ambitious, self-contained,
and what does she go? She goes for Bill; very much of the high estrogen. Hes
probably got high testosterone too, but hes certainly high estrogen. I mean, he
cries when Hillary makes a speech, he feels everybodys pain. He sees the big
picture. The whole world knows he cant stop talking; his linguistic skills are in
the estrogen system. Hes got wonderful people skills. Im glad the government
sent him into North Korea to get those two girls out rather than his wife.
But anyway, the high estrogen and the high testosterone tend to be attracted to
each other. And what I think theyre doing from a Darwinian perspective is
pooling very different resources. I think the tough-minded high testosterone,
what I call the director, needs the compassion and the empathy and the people

skills of the high estrogen type. And I think the high estrogen type needs the
decisiveness, the directness, the ambitiousness of the high testosterone type.
So, I think weve evolved three really different way of playing the mating game. I
think that the high testosterone and high estrogen are pooling very different
resources to raise their babies. Theyve got very find strength between the two
of them. I think that the very traditional type, what I call the builder, is
capitalizing on very powerful strengths for raising babies when they marry
another builder. This other person is going to respect the rules, theyre going to
follow traditions, and theyre going to be loyal. Its a very strong combination for
raising babies.
But I wondered, why is it that two of the explorer types, the high dopamine types,
if theyre both great adventurers, whos going to take care of the baby while they
race off to climb Mt. Everest? It began to occur to me, maybe, and I dont have
the data on this yet, maybe these people are more likely to have a series of
marriages. What I call serial monogamy and have children with each different
marriage, in which case theyre creating more genetic variety in their young. So,
there are three different ways of passing your DNA onto tomorrow.
Question: Is technology like online dating changing the way we fall and stay in
love?
Helen Fisher: I think that online dating is just the newest way of doing the same
old thing. As a matter of fact, I think its actually a little bit more natural. First of
all, people are doing it and a lot more people are going to do it and theyre going
to do it because we are no longer marrying the boy we met in high school. Were
not marrying the girl we met in college. Were not even marrying in our early
20s, and by your late 20s you sort of know everybody in the office and youve
gone through all of those boys. You know, youve met everybody in your social
circle. Where are you going to meet people? And also with a very high divorce
rate, theres a lot of people who are back in the dating game in their mid-30s,
40s, 50s, and higher. And you cant stand in the middle of Park Avenue in New
York City and flap your dress up and down. I mean, at some point youve to go
find a new way of social networking and all of these dating services are doing
that. And among the young people its Twitter and Facebook and other social
networks. So, I think that the human animal loves. Were born to love. And we
do it all our lives. Its the same brain system whether youre 10 years old, or
whether youre 90 years old. Children do fall in love. The sexual component
might not be there, but they will become intensely attracted to another child. And
certainly older people fall in love. Theres good data now the brain system does
not change with age. And weve got a society where people are very peripatetic
and almost nomadic, and all of these Internet dating sites are a way to meet new
people.
And in many respects, I think that its actually more natural. I know that sounds
odd because were used to walking into a bar and going up and talking to

somebody who we dont know anything about them, we dont know if theyre
married, we dont know if theyre in town for the night. We know nothing about
them and yet we seem to think thats natural. But actually, its much more natural
to meet somebody having already known what they do for a living, how old they
are, what some of their goals are, what their interests are.
You know for millions of years, we traveled in these little hunting and gathering
bands on the grasslands of Africa. And a young girl might not know that cute boy
over in the next fireplace, but her father knows his uncle, her mother knows his
niece, and theres so many gossip circles that she can find out probably in an
hour whether hes a good dancer, whether hes got a good sense of humor,
whether hes likely to be a loyal partner. And so with these new networking sites,
you do get to know some basic things about somebody before you meet them,
and thats more natural.
Question: When it comes to the brain, are there differences between
heterosexual and homosexual love?
Helen Fisher: Ive always maintained that its exactly the same brain system. I
mean, gay or straight have the same brain system for fear. Theyve got the same
brain system for curiosity. Theyve got the same brain system for stubbornness.
And I think that the brain system for romantic love is exactly the same. Who you
fall in love with, thats different. But how you feel when you love, that I think is
the same. And I did a questionnaire study of 800 people; 400 in the United
States and 400 in Japan. And I had quite a significant homosexual subpopulation who took my questionnaire and I didnt find any difference at all in the
basic characteristics between those who expressed romantic love and were
heterosexual and those that were homosexual.
I think we actually make too much of homosexuality, its a little like we made too
much of skin color, and now were making too much of homosexuality because,
as I say, whether youre a curious person doesnt mean whether youre gay or
straight doesnt add to whether you are curious or whether youre good at math
or whether youve got a good sense of humor, or we seem to I think we way
over misunderstood how small the part of the brain that it.
Question: What has been the strangest reaction from somebody who finds out
what you do for a living?
Helen Fisher: Ill never forget the moment, and its only happened a few times,
and it was a very fancy room full of people with black tie, not that theyre any
smarter, but I thought they might be a little bit more educated. And it was a
woman, and I dont know how we got on to what I did, and I started talking about
love and the brain. And she looked at me and said, Why would you want to
know?

I couldnt understand it at first because Im so curious about it, and I finally began
to realize she felt that knowing more about romantic love would spoil it and she
wanted to keep it in the supernatural. And my real response to that is, you know,
I do know a good deal about romantic love, but you know, you can know every
single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake and then sit down and eat that cake
and feel that rush of joy in the same way that you can know everything there is,
or a great deal about romantic love and still feel that intense passion just the way
anybody else does. But what its really done for me is dramatically expanded my
sense of unity I think with all humanity.
I will look in a museum at a little bracelet that somebody dug up from 20,000
years ago and I think somebody gave that bracelet to somebody, somebody wore
it. Somebody was in love. Poetry from around the world. I mean, I look at a
baby carriage now and I say, Oh boy, are you in for something. But theres
continuity when you begin to study romantic love. You feel the deep passion of
just about everybody on earth.
Recorded on January 6, 2010