Dr. Helen Fisher Interview – Insights from Chief Scientific Advisor, Match.com
“Insights from Chief Scientific Advisor, Match.com”
Jasbina Ahluwalia interviews Dr. Helen Fisher
Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropologist, is a Senior Research Fellow, The Kinsey Institute, member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site Match.com.
She has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality style shapes who you are and who you love.
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(00:48): Hello everyone. Welcome to Intersections Match’s Talk Radio, a monthly holistic lifestyle show focused on the continual evolution into the best versions of our authentic selves.
This is Jasbina, your host. I’m a former practicing lawyer and the Founder of Intersections Match, the only elite national personalized matchmaking company focused on singles of South Asian descent nationwide in the US.
As a dating coach and matchmaker, I’m always interested in fresh perspectives from authors, researchers and experts to help me provide unparalleled service to our clients.
I’m very excited to welcome Dr. Helen Fisher to our show today. Dr. Fisher is an anthropologist, human behavior researcher and author. She is a professor at Rutgers University and has studied romantic interpersonal attraction for over 30 years. Dr. Fisher is a leading expert on the biology of love and attraction and is the most referenced scholar in the love research community.
In 2005, she was hired by Match.com to build Chemistry.com, which used her research and experience to create the hormone-based and personality-based matching system. She was one of the main speakers in the 2006 and 2008 TED Conference. I had the pleasure of shooting a YourTango Expert Video series with Dr. Fisher in New York City. She has valuable insights to share with our listeners. Welcome to the show, Dr. Fisher.
Dr. Helen Fisher
(2:17): Thank you, Jasbina. Just call me Helen. It’s nice to see you again.
(2:21): It’s great to have you. As an anthropologist and human behavior researcher, what do you believe are a few of the greatest gender differences in the way men and women approach finding life partners?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(2:40): I think that what will surprise people is that men fall in love more often. Men fall in love much faster. When men meet someone that they do fall in love with, they want to introduce that person to friends and family sooner. They like more public displays of affection. They want to move in sooner.
In many respects, men tend to be more romantic than women, and I think, for good evolutionary reasons. Women are the custodians of the egg. We are the ones who are going to hold that baby for nine months inside ourselves. Everywhere in the world, women spend more time raising children under the age of four. Men seem to be somewhat more romantic than women are.
(3:24): My next question was about misconceptions. I think you already addressed some of them. What are the greatest misconceptions regarding the way men and women approach finding life partners? You have that empirical evidence there to debunk a lot of these myths. Are there any other misconceptions that might surprise our listeners?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(3:49): There are all kinds of things. I wrote a whole book on gender differences in the brain. One of the things that is one of my pet peeves is that we live in a society where people think that women are less interested in sex than men. As an anthropologist, when you go into tribal societies or hunting and gathering societies, these people don’t think that women are any less sexual than men are.
We come from 10,000 years of believing that a woman’s place is in the home, that they want attachment and men want to be adulterers. We go into relationships thinking that women aren’t interested in sex, which is not true. I often wonder why everyone thinks that men are more adulterous than women are. All of our data does show that men are more adulterous than women.
But in younger generations who did not grow up with the double sexual standard, where women work for a living and make just as much money as their husbands do, the data is that women are just as adulterous as men. I often think that men and women are in collusion here. Men seem to want to think that men are more adulterous. Women want men to think that men are more adulterous. So they simply agree on all of this.
In a recent study, they asked people how many sexual encounters they’d had in the last year. Sure enough, men said that they’d had many more than women. Then they hooked up a group of people to a lie detector. Sure enough, women had just as many sex partners as men did. I think we’re moving under a lot of misconceptions. We’ve spent 50 years trying to figure out who women are. I think now it’s time to figure out who men are, too.
(5:49): Are there different reasons for adultery gender-wise?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(6:05): There are all kinds of reasons for adultery. I’ll give you just a few of them. I did a meta-analysis. I looked at all of the data on adultery. I wrote an article called Infidelity: When, Where, Why. It’s on my website, HelenFisher.com if someone wants to look it up. There are many, many reasons for adultery.
Some people want to solve a sex problem. Some people want more sex. Some people want to get caught and patch up a relationship. Some people want to get caught and end relationships. Some people want to supplement a relationship. Some people get lonely when their partner is out of town. Some people want to walk on the wild side. Those are some psychological reasons. There are all kinds of reasons. If a woman is very dependent on a man for financial stability, she’s going to be less likely to be adulterous. It goes on and on. There are various reasons for adultery.
There is something that I find most interesting in the adultery literature. They asked a group of people why they were adulterous. As it turns out, 54% of men were in a very happy marriage when they were adulterous. Whereas, 36% of women were in a very happy marriage when they were adulterous. That means that there are a certain number of people out there being adulterous when, in fact, they are in a good, solid partnership. That makes me as an anthropologist begin to wonder why there could be some evolutionary reasons that we would do something that, in this society, is not to our advantage.
I’ve looked into some of the biology. There are some genes that are likely to make someone more susceptible to adultery. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to be more adulterous. Some people are more susceptible to alcoholism, smoking cigarettes or eating too much, for biological reasons, but they don’t do it. The bottom line is that we do vary in our desire for risk, sex and adventure. Some people are going to be more prone to it than others.
(8:36): From a biological perspective, why do you think we fall in love with one person rather than another?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(8:53): We know from a psychological perspective that you tend to fall in love with someone from the same socioeconomic background, general level of intelligence, good looks, religious and social values. Your childhood certainly plays a role. I wanted to know the second half of the puzzle. Are we naturally, biologically drawn to some people rather than others?
This was my book, Why Him? Why Her? This was my work with Match.com. I created a questionnaire that 14 million people have now taken in 40 cultures. As it turns out, I think that we’ve evolved four very broad styles of thinking and behaving linked with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen systems.
There are people who are very expressive of the dopamine system. They tend to be novelty seeking, risk taking, curious, creative, spontaneous and energetic. Those people tend to be drawn to people like themselves. They want someone who is going to get up off the couch at 7:00 and go to the opera, go swimming in the dark or ride their bikes to a different restaurant in town.
The high serotonin types are people who tend to be traditional, conventional, follow the rules, respect authority, like rules and schedules, tend to be more religious and conscientious. They also go for people like themselves. In those two cases, similarity attracts.
In the other two cases, opposites seem to attract. People who are very expressive of the testosterone system tend to go for those who are expressive of the estrogen system and vice versa. The high testosterone types are what I call directors. It could be women as well as men. There are lots of women with high testosterone, but many more men.
These people tend to be analytical, logical, direct, decisive, tough minded and skeptical. They tend to be good at things like engineering, math, computers, mechanics or music. They go for the kind of person who is high estrogen. These are mostly women. These people tend to be imaginative and intuitive with very good people skills and verbal skills. They are compassionate, empathetic and emotionally expressive. The high estrogen types go for the high testosterone types.
I go into great detail in my book on all of these. That is a thumbnail sketch of it. Of course, there are combinations of all of these types. For example, I score very high in dopamine and estrogen. I tend to be the explorer type with verbal and people skills. Sure enough, I go for men who are similar to me in the dopamine scale. They are risk taking, novelty seeking, curious, creative and spontaneous. But they are different from me in terms of the estrogen-testosterone scale. I go for guys who are more narcissistic.
I’ve never met two people who are alike. I’m an identical twin and we are not exactly alike. No two people are alike. But there are patterns to nature. There are patterns to personality. There are patterns to mate choice. That’s what I’m trying to understand. Once you get to understand these things, you don’t blame people so much. You begin to understand, “He’s just naturally that way. I’ll have to work around that or do it a little differently so that he can hear me.” It’s been very valuable for me personally, of all of my books, to write this book about these personality styles.
(13:01): What I really appreciated about that book is that you identified that. You laid it out. These are the patterns. Then you said, “If you find yourself in a partnership with X, Y or Z, this is how we work with our differences.” The whole becomes greater than the parts because we are complimentary in ways. I love that aspect of it. You make the differences an asset.
Dr. Helen Fisher
(13:41): I wanted to give an example. I went out with a man for many years before he died. He hated the word “relationship.” He didn’t want to talk about anyone’s feelings. But I knew what his feelings were. I didn’t need to go there with him. I am a very standard woman in that I get intimacy out of talking with someone, knowing how they’re feeling and what they’re thinking. That’s very standard for a high estrogen type, and I am that type.
One day, I said to him, “What is intimacy to you if it’s not talking?” He said, “It’s doing things with you, Helen.” Doing things with him, from my perspective, was wonderful fun, but it didn’t necessarily generate that intimacy that is intimacy to me. But it is that to him. I had to restructure my understanding of what he felt, how he felt it and when he felt it. I didn’t feel that myself but it made me realize that was intimacy to him.
(14:51): Then you could see his romantic gestures in that lens. You could see it from his perspective. For him, it meant X, Y and Z. You could appreciate it in a different way. That’s wonderful.
You mentioned your work with Match.com. In addition to our one-to-one matchmaking, we have an online dating support offering. We hand-hold our clients through that online dating process. Based on your research, your work with Match.com and the surveys, what suggestions might you have for men using online dating for the purpose of finding a life partner?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(16:07): First, all of my data with Match.com and Chemistry.com indicate that the vast majority of both men and women are looking for a partner. When we asked the question, “What are you looking for?” in one study, only 3% said, “I just want to date a lot of people.” The vast majority are actually looking for a partner. That really encouraged me because I’m in that business. It’s nice to know who your clients are.
These are the things that I would say, not only to men, but to women as well. Foremost, think of reasons to say yes. One of the problems with online dating is what’s called cognitive overload. We get the feeling that there are one million people out there, and we should try one and then another. The bottom line is, when you first meet someone online and then you meet them in a bar or coffee house, you know so little about them that you over-weight what you do know about them.
All the data shows that, the more you get to know someone, the more you like them, and the more you think that they are like you. If you like someone at all on the first date, get to know them more. Don’t quit after the first date. Get to know them on a second date and a third date. You will begin to see things about them that you hadn’t known before. You’ll have more data to make a decision on. Think of reasons to say yes. Get past that first date. By the way, don’t stay on the internet talking to the person. Get out and meet them.
(18:16): I love what you just said.
Dr. Helen Fisher
(18:19): You have to get out and meet them. The only real algorithm is your own human brain. You have to hear them. You have to see them. You have to listen to them. You have to share your life with them and make that effort. Think of reasons to say yes. Get past the first date. Get out there and meet the person.
After you’ve met nine people, pick one of them to get to know better. You don’t want to get caught up in this cognitive overload, this spinning around like a mouse on a treadmill, constantly looking. The more you do that, the less likely you will be to find anyone at all.
I say nine people because there have been some studies that say, when you walk into a room and don’t know anyone and there are 100 people in that room, after you’ve met nine people in that room, you will statistically have met the full array of personality styles. Get to know the people. Get out there. After you’ve met nine, pick one to get to know better so that you don’t get into this whirlwind of looking.
(19:38): Have you seen studies with respect to whether attraction can grow over time? You have that first meeting with someone. It’s there or it’s not there. Is that something that can grow?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(20:00): It not only can grow, but it does grow. The data we have is elegant. With Match, I do an annual study called Singles in America. We don’t poll the Match population. We poll the American population. It’s a representative sample based on the US Census. One of the questions I ask is, “Have you ever initially not found someone attractive at all and eventually fallen in love with them?”
Every year that I ask it, over 35% of people say yes. There is other data showing that, the more you get to know someone, the more you like them. A wonderful study was done by a scientist. It was a group of students in a college environment. On the first day of a particularly large class, they rated how attractive they thought everyone in the room was.
Sure enough, the best looking people scored highest. Then they asked the same group of people towards the end of the semester who was most attractive and it changed entirely. Some people who no one regarded as attractive initially then became attractive.
It’s because, now you’ve discovered that they have a wonderful sense of humor. They’re very gracious with their comments. They’re a likeable, funny, charming and educated person in spite of the fact that they might be a little too short, tall or heavy. Some of the other people who were initially regarded as extremely attractive had lost a lot of their charm because they got to know them.
(21:58): That message tells you to give that date another shot, unless there are red flags. You mentioned the survey data. This is not based on the Match.com subscribers but the public at large. Was there anything from the most recent survey that surprised you?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(22:31): There are many things but there are two that I really like. One of them is that gays and lesbians are just like heterosexuals. They fall in love just as often. They’re eager for deep attachments. They spend just as many nights at home by themselves cooking their dinner. They’re just like everyone else. Who they fall for is different but how they feel when they fall in love and how they court is exactly the same. I think that needed to be said.
Here is the other thing. I’m older. I’m a senior citizen, and we’re just like everyone else. They’ve had just as many one-night stands. They’ve had just as many friends with benefits. They’re the least likely to want to marry, which I can understand. The older you get, the less likely you are. When you think of it from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective, marriage evolved for having babies and passing on your DNA.
The people in their 20s and 30s are the most eager to marry and settle down because they have a job to do. They need to have babies, pass on their DNA and build a family life. The further you get into your 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, the less likely you are to want to wed. Older people are not desperate.
A question that I love to ask is, “Would you make a long-term commitment to someone who had everything you were looking for but you were not in love with them?” The least likely to make a long-term commitment without romantic love were people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. It’s the young who need to make some compromises in order to pick the right partner to have babies with. I think we have a misunderstanding of gays and straights. I also think we have a misunderstanding of older people and men.
(24:49): That makes sense when you look at the reasoning. It’s very interesting. Different stages are looking for different things. Certain things that are important in your 20s and 30s become not so much in your 50s and 60s, and the reverse. I think that lining up all singles can be counterproductive.
Dr. Helen Fisher
(25:29): Most of our studies of sexuality are on college students because that’s where the professors are and where they can get a large group of people. It is my hypothesis that in your late teens and early 20s that the sexes are the least alike. Women are the most likely to get pregnant so they’re going to be a little bit more picky. Men have almost nothing to lose by sleeping around. I think that, as the sexes get older, they get more alike. That is not shown in most of our academic studies.
(26:07): Given who you’re studying.
Dr. Helen Fisher
(26:09): They haven’t studied older compared to younger people.
(26:17): Women and men’s hormone levels are different later on in life. They are typically early on in life too, right? Things like that are big factors, I would think.
Dr. Helen Fisher
(26:27): Absolutely. You’re right. As men get older, levels of testosterone go down. A man who didn’t spend a lot of time with his children suddenly spends a lot more time with his grandchildren. Men will also put more weight on around their breasts the way that women do. Men become more compassionate as they get older as testosterone goes down.
Women become more assertive. A post-menopausal woman is much more likely to tell you what she thinks than a sweet, young girl. They’re more assertive. They tend to be quite ambitious and highly motivated. I do think the sexes become more alike as they get older.
(27:15): That’s so insightful. When you’re looking at studies, you have to put your investigative hat on and say, “Who is being studied here? What do we need to control for?”
Dr. Helen Fisher
(27:28): Yes, and also, what questions are you asking? The answers you get have something to do with the questions that you ask.
(27:36): Absolutely. You have Google as a search engine. What you place in there determines what you get. Garbage in, garbage out. The question dictates the quality of the answers.
Because there is so much variation in different life stages, a lot of our audience is in their 20s and 30s, looking for marriage for the first time. What are your top three tips to singles in that age range looking for a life partner?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(28:23): What’s interesting about today is that we have what I call a huge pre-commitment stage before tying the knot. One hundred years ago, you met someone at church. You swung on the porch swing before Sunday lunch. After getting to know someone very briefly, you married them. These days, it is quite the reverse. What people are doing is really getting to know the person before they tie the knot.
In one study, they asked people living together why they hadn’t married yet and 67% said that they were terrified of the legal and emotional issues surrounding divorce. What I think the young are doing now is going through this huge pre-commitment stage. They’re starting with a one-night stand. If they like the person, they’ll see them again. Then they move very cautiously into friends with benefits. Then they move very cautiously into living together before they marry.
I think a lot of Americans think that this is irresponsible. I’m not advocating it but I think that it’s caution. These days, people want to know everything about their partner before they tie the knot. I think that is going to lead to happier marriages.
In one questionnaire that I did with Match.com of married people, I asked, “Would you remarry the person that you’re currently married to?” Eight-one percent said yes. That’s a lot of people. I think, with more and more people marrying later and spending a long time with someone before they marry, we’re going to move into a generation of happier relationships.
They know who this person is. They’re marrying later. They have more tools to keep it together. Women are so much more interesting than they used to be. We’re educated now. We have a lot of our own financial stability. I think we’re moving in a very optimistic direction.
(30:46): Helen, our listeners consist of men and women of a variety of ages and ethnic backgrounds. Our matchmaking and dating coaching services focus on South Asians mainly in North America who are choosing not to go the route of traditional arranged marriages. Based on your experience and research, do you have any insights regarding arranged marriages?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(31:27): There was a wonderful book on this called Marriage: East and West. It was written in the 1960s but it was really good. Among the data is that, 10 years after the wedding has taken place, arranged marriages tend to be just as happy as marriages in which you choose for yourself. I’m not surprised. In an arranged marriage, your parents have been very careful to pick someone of the same socioeconomic background and level of intelligence.
You have two large families to hold things together. A lot of arranged marriages can be extremely happy. Indians have a word they use during the marriage ceremony. It is they call the moment where romantic love enters. These people expect to fall in love with their partner. They expect their parents to do a good job of serving up possibilities.
They meet this person several times before they go through the marriage ceremony. There is every reason to think that a lot of these marriages are very successful. The Chinese have long had a marriage pattern that has not been as successful. The bottom line is, arranged marriages have been very successful in many ways.
(32:59): I really appreciate you sharing your insights with us, Helen. Do you have any last thoughts or take-home message that you’d like to leave our listeners with?
Dr. Helen Fisher
(33:07): I just came home from Tajikistan in Central Asia. I visited the “five stans.” I had this guide who walked with me. He gave me this quote that I find so interesting. He said, “Love is like war. It’s easy to get into and hard to get out of.” Take the time before you get into it and you may succeed.
(33:38): I love that. Thank you so much for joining us, Helen. It’s been an absolute pleasure. In case you joined us late and you want to share this show with people in your life, I’d like to remind you that today’s radio show will be archived and available as a podcast on Intersections Match’s website, which is www.IntersectionsMatch.com. I can be reached at jasbina@intersectionsmatch.com. I appreciate you hanging out with us. Make sure to join us for next month’s show. Take care, everyone.
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