Why we love, why we cheat | Helen Fisher

Summary

In this insightful talk, Helen Fisher explores the science of romantic love, its neurological basis, and how it differs from lust and attachment. She discusses the impact of women entering the workforce on societal trends in love and relationships, and the potential effects of antidepressants on these brain systems. Fisher concludes with a humorous story illustrating the unpredictability of love and the enduring nature of our basic human drives.

Takeaways

• 🧠 Romantic love activates the same brain region as cocaine, indicating it's a powerful drive rather than just an emotion.
• 💘 Falling in love involves a person taking on 'special meaning' and becoming the center of one's world.
• 🎯 Romantic love is characterized by intense focus, energy, elation, and sometimes obsessive thoughts about the loved one.
• 🔒 Romantic love can lead to extreme sexual possessiveness, which may have evolved to encourage pair-bonding for child-rearing.
• 🧬 The speaker suggests three distinct brain systems related to mating and reproduction: sex drive, romantic love, and attachment.
• 🌐 The rise of women in the workforce is a significant social trend that is impacting traditional gender roles and expressions of sexuality.
• 💪 Women's verbal abilities and people skills are highlighted as strengths that they bring to the job market and society.
• 💑 The concept of 'symmetrical marriage' is emerging, emphasizing equality and companionship in long-term relationships.
• 📉 The aging population and societal changes may contribute to more stable marriages due to a variety of factors including health and longevity.
• 💊 The speaker expresses concern over the long-term use of antidepressants, which can suppress dopamine and potentially impact romantic love and sexual drive.
• ❤️ Love is presented as a complex interplay of biology and culture, with both neurological and emotional components.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the speaker's research on romantic love?

The speaker's research on romantic love focuses on understanding the psychological and neurological aspects of falling in love, including the specific brain regions activated during this state and how it differs from other emotions.

How many people were involved in the functional MRI brain scanner study on romantic love?

There were 32 people involved in the study, 17 of whom were in love and had their love reciprocated, and 15 who were in love but had just been rejected.

What does the speaker suggest is the primary characteristic of romantic love?

The speaker suggests that the primary characteristic of romantic love is an intense craving to be with a specific person, both emotionally and sexually, which is more than just a series of emotions but rather a drive.

What is the role of dopamine in romantic love according to the speaker?

According to the speaker, dopamine plays a significant role in romantic love by creating a focused attention on the loved one, similar to the rush experienced with cocaine, indicating that romantic love is a powerful drive rather than just an emotion.

What are the three basic brain systems that the speaker identifies as having evolved from mating and reproduction?

The three basic brain systems identified are the sex drive, romantic love, and attachment, each serving different purposes in human mating and bonding behaviors.

How does the speaker describe the impact of women moving into the workforce on society and relationships?

The speaker describes the impact as profound, leading to a rise in female sexual expression, a return to a form of marriage equality, and an increase in the importance of romantic love in long-term relationships.

What is the concern the speaker expresses about the use of antidepressants and their potential effect on love and relationships?

The speaker is concerned that the use of antidepressants, particularly SSRIs, can suppress the dopamine circuit associated with romantic love, potentially killing the sex drive and the feelings of attachment that follow orgasm.

What is the 'love map' mentioned by the speaker, and how does it relate to falling in love?

The 'love map' is an unconscious list of traits that a person builds in childhood, which influences who they fall in love with. It is part of the complex interplay of factors that determine romantic attraction.

How does the speaker's story about the graduate student and the rickshaw illustrate the cultural aspect of love?

The story illustrates that while there is a strong biological component to love, cultural factors and personal experiences can also play a significant role in who we fall in love with, as the graduate student attempted to use a thrilling experience to trigger romantic feelings.

What does the speaker believe about the potential for making good marriages in the current era?

The speaker believes that with women's increased education and empowerment, as well as societal changes towards equality and the decline in divorce rates, the current era may be one of the best times in human history for forming good, stable marriages.

What is the speaker's view on the complexity of human emotions and the potential for loving more than one person at a time?

The speaker acknowledges the complexity of human emotions, suggesting that it is possible to feel deep attachment, romantic love, and sexual desire for different people simultaneously, indicating the potential for loving more than one person at a time.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 The Neuroscience of Romantic Love

The speaker begins by discussing her research on romantic love, which involved scanning the brains of 32 people who were in love. The study compared 17 individuals whose love was reciprocated and 15 who had recently been rejected. The findings from the functional MRI highlighted that romantic love is associated with specific brain activity, particularly with areas that also respond to the euphoria of cocaine, suggesting love is a powerful drive rather than a mere emotion. The speaker emphasizes the evolutionary purpose of love in uniting couples for child-rearing and introduces the idea of love as an obsession that dominates one's thoughts and feelings.

05:01

🌐 The Impact of Women in the Workforce

The speaker shifts focus to the social trend of women entering the workforce and its profound impact on society. She presents data from 130 societies, showing a consistent trend of women gaining economic power, health, and education, albeit slowly. This trend is seen as a return to the historical norm, as women were traditionally significant contributors to early human economies. The speaker also discusses the counter-trend that acknowledges the persistence of gender disparities but asserts that progress continues. The paragraph concludes with the assertion that women's reintegration into the workforce is reminiscent of their ancient roles and is a significant societal shift.

10:02

🚀 Women's Influence on Business and Society

This paragraph delves into the distinctive attributes women bring to the job market, emphasizing gender differences in verbal ability, people skills, and holistic thinking. The speaker highlights women's enhanced communication skills, honed over evolutionary time through child-rearing and social interactions. The influence of women in media and writing is noted, with statistics indicating their growing presence in these fields. The speaker also touches on women's negotiation and imaginative skills, suggesting that a collaborative society values and employs the talents of both genders. The paragraph concludes by examining the effects of women's increased presence in the workforce on sexual expression, romantic relationships, and the concept of 'symmetrical marriage.'

15:03

💞 The Evolution of Love and Relationships

The speaker discusses the global desire for love in marriage and the decline of arranged marriages, indicating a shift towards romantic love as a foundation for long-term relationships. The paragraph explores the potential for increased marital stability due to societal aging trends and the personal growth of individuals. The speaker also addresses the complex interplay of the brain's systems for lust, romantic love, and attachment, noting that they can operate independently and lead to the capacity for loving multiple people simultaneously. The paragraph concludes with a reflection on human nature, suggesting that happiness is a construct of our own making rather than an inherent state.

20:09

💊 The Concerns of Antidepressant Use

In this paragraph, the speaker expresses concern over the widespread use of antidepressants and their potential impact on the brain's systems for love and attachment. She explains how these medications, by increasing serotonin levels, can suppress dopamine, which is crucial for romantic love, and subsequently affect sexual drive and orgasm, which are linked to attachment. The speaker warns of the broader implications of tampering with these interconnected brain systems and emphasizes the importance of love in human life. The paragraph concludes with a story about the unpredictable nature of love, illustrating the complex interplay of biology and culture in romantic attraction.

🌟 The Magic and Science of Love

The final paragraph concludes the speaker's presentation with a personal anecdote about the unpredictable magic of love, even in the face of scientific understanding. She shares a humorous story about a graduate student who attempted to use the principles of neurobiology to induce romantic love by engaging in a thrilling activity with a love interest. The story serves to highlight the enduring mystery and cultural aspects of love, beyond the biological drives discussed throughout the presentation. The speaker reiterates the deep-rooted nature of love's neurobiological underpinnings and their significance to the human experience.

Keywords

💡Romantic Love

Romantic love is a complex emotional state characterized by intense feelings of affection and desire for a particular person. In the video, it is described as having specific psychological effects, such as 'special meaning' and 'intense energy,' and is associated with the brain's reward system, similar to the rush of cocaine. The script uses the example of Yuan Zhen's poem to illustrate the focus and obsession that come with romantic love.

💡Functional MRI

Functional MRI, or fMRI, is a neuroimaging procedure that measures and maps the brain's activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. In the context of the video, the speaker and colleagues used fMRI to study the brains of people who were in love, observing activity in regions associated with reward and motivation, which helps to understand the neurological basis of romantic love.

💡Dopamine

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with the brain's reward system and plays a role in motivation, pleasure, and the anticipation of reward. The video explains that the heightened activity in the brain regions related to romantic love is linked to dopamine release, suggesting that romantic love is a drive that comes from the 'motor of the mind.'

💡Attachment

Attachment refers to the psychological tendency to seek closeness to a specific individual, often a long-term partner, and to feel secure when that individual is present. In the video, it is presented as one of the three evolved brain systems related to mating and reproduction, alongside the sex drive and romantic love, and is associated with feelings of calm and security.

💡Sex Drive

The sex drive, also known as libido, is the desire for sexual activity. The speaker in the video discusses it as a fundamental brain system that evolved for sexual gratification and to seek out a range of partners, contrasting it with romantic love and attachment.

💡Evolutionary Purpose

The concept of evolutionary purpose in the video refers to the idea that behaviors and emotions, such as romantic love, have developed because of their role in increasing the chances of survival and reproduction of our ancestors. The speaker suggests that romantic love evolved to focus mating energy on one individual at a time, conserving time and energy.

💡Women in the Workforce

The term 'women in the workforce' refers to the increasing participation of women in the job market and their economic empowerment. The video discusses this as a significant social trend impacting traditional gender roles, with implications for mating, marriage, and family life, and leading to a resurgence of female sexual expression and marriage equality.

💡Antidepressants

Antidepressants are medications used to treat depression and other mood disorders. The video expresses concern about the long-term use of antidepressants, particularly SSRIs, which can affect the brain's dopamine levels and potentially suppress romantic love, the sex drive, and the associated feelings of attachment.

💡Cultural Expression of Love

Cultural expression of love refers to the various ways in which love is represented and experienced across different societies and contexts. The video touches on the universality of love through the ages, mentioning songs, poems, novels, and other art forms that reflect the powerful brain system for love and its impact on human culture.

💡Novel Experiences

Novel experiences are new and unusual activities or events that can stimulate the brain and evoke emotional responses. In the video, the speaker recounts a story about using a novel experience, a rickshaw ride, to potentially trigger romantic love by increasing dopamine levels, illustrating the interaction between biology and cultural experiences in love.

Highlights

The speaker discusses the two biggest social trends of the coming century and the next 10,000 years, starting with an exploration of romantic love.

32 people in love were studied using a functional MRI brain scanner, divided into those whose love was reciprocated and those who had been rejected.

Romantic love involves a person taking on 'special meaning' and being the focus of intense attention and affection.

Poetry from around the world exemplifies the universal experience of romantic love, with a specific example from eighth-century China.

Romantic love is characterized by intense energy, elation, and real dependence, often leading to sexual possessiveness.

The speaker suggests a Darwinian purpose for romantic love, as a drive to pull two people together for child-rearing.

MRI scans reveal that romantic love activates brain regions associated with the rush of cocaine, indicating it is a drive rather than an emotion.

The speaker differentiates between three evolved brain systems related to mating and reproduction: sex drive, romantic love, and attachment.

The impact of women entering the workforce globally is discussed as a significant social trend affecting relationships and family life.

Women's verbal abilities and their evolutionary role in communication are highlighted as a key factor in their rising economic and social power.

The speaker predicts a rise in female sexual expression and a return to ancient forms of marriage equality.

The importance of romantic love in marriage is underscored, with statistics showing most people would not marry without it.

The aging world population and its potential impact on marriage stability due to decreased likelihood of divorce with age.

The complexity of love is highlighted, with the possibility of experiencing lust, romantic love, and attachment with different people.

The speaker expresses concern about the widespread use of antidepressants and their potential to suppress the brain's dopamine circuit associated with romantic love.

A personal story illustrates the cultural and magical aspects of love, despite the biological underpinnings discussed throughout the talk.

The speaker concludes by emphasizing the enduring nature of the human drives for sex, romantic love, and attachment.

Transcripts

I'd like to talk today about the two biggest social trends

in the coming century,

and perhaps in the next 10,000 years.

But I want to start with my work on romantic love,

because that's my most recent work.

What I and my colleagues did was put 32 people, who were madly in love,

into a functional MRI brain scanner.

17 who were madly in love and their love was accepted;

and 15 who were madly in love and they had just been dumped.

And so I want to tell you about that first,

and then go on into where I think love is going.

(Laughter)

"What 'tis to love?" Shakespeare said.

I think our ancestors --

I think human beings have been wondering about this question

since they sat around their campfires

or lay and watched the stars a million years ago.

I started out by trying to figure out what romantic love was

by looking at the last 45 years of the psychological research

and as it turns out,

there's a very specific group of things that happen when you fall in love.

The first thing that happens is,

a person begins to take on what I call, "special meaning."

As a truck driver once said to me,

"The world had a new center, and that center was Mary Anne."

George Bernard Shaw said it differently.

"Love consists of overestimating the differences

between one woman and another."

And indeed, that's what we do.

(Laughter)

And then you just focus on this person.

You can list what you don't like about them,

but then you sweep that aside and focus on what you do.

As Chaucer said, "Love is blind."

In trying to understand romantic love,

I decided I would read poetry from all over the world,

and I just want to give you one very short poem

from eighth-century China,

because it's an almost perfect example

of a man who is focused totally on a particular woman.

It's a little bit like when you are madly in love with somebody

and you walk into a parking lot --

their car is different from every other car in the parking lot.

Their wine glass at dinner

is different from every other wine glass at the dinner party.

And in this case, a man got hooked on a bamboo sleeping mat.

And it goes like this.

It's by a guy called Yuan Zhen.

"I cannot bear to put away the bamboo sleeping mat.

The night I brought you home, I watched you roll it out."

He became hooked on a sleeping mat,

probably because of elevated activity of dopamine in his brain,

just like with you and me.

But anyway, not only does this person take on special meaning,

you focus your attention on them.

You aggrandize them.

But you have intense energy.

As one Polynesian said, "I felt like jumping in the sky."

You're up all night. You're walking till dawn.

You feel intense elation when things are going well;

mood swings into horrible despair when things are going poorly.

Real dependence on this person.

As one businessman in New York said to me,

"Anything she liked, I liked."

Simple. Romantic love is very simple.

You become extremely sexually possessive.

You know, if you're just sleeping with somebody casually,

you don't really care if they're sleeping with somebody else.

But the moment you fall in love,

you become extremely sexually possessive of them.

I think there's a Darwinian purpose to this.

The whole point of this is to pull two people together

strongly enough to begin to rear babies as a team.

But the main characteristics of romantic love are craving:

an intense craving to be with a particular person,

not just sexually, but emotionally.

It would be nice to go to bed with them,

but you want them to call you on the telephone, to invite you out, etc.,

to tell you that they love you.

The other main characteristic is motivation.

The motor in the brain begins to crank, and you want this person.

And last but not least, it is an obsession.

Before I put these people in the MRI machine,

I would ask them all kinds of questions.

But my most important question was always the same.

It was: "What percentage of the day and night do you think about this person?"

And indeed, they would say,

"All day. All night.

I can never stop thinking about him or her."

And then, the very last question --

I would always have to work myself up to this question,

because I'm not a psychologist.

I don't work with people in any kind of traumatic situation.

My final question was always the same.

I would say, "Would you die for him or her?"

And, indeed, these people would say "Yes!"

as if I had asked them to pass the salt.

I was just staggered by it.

So we scanned their brains,

looking at a photograph of their sweetheart

and looking at a neutral photograph,

with a distraction task in between.

So we could look at the same brain when it was in that heightened state

and when it was in a resting state.

And we found activity in a lot of brain regions.

In fact, one of the most important was a brain region

that becomes active when you feel the rush of cocaine.

And indeed, that's exactly what happens.

I began to realize that romantic love is not an emotion.

In fact, I had always thought it was a series of emotions,

from very high to very low.

But actually, it's a drive.

It comes from the motor of the mind,

the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind.

The kind of part of the mind

when you're reaching for that piece of chocolate,

when you want to win that promotion at work.

The motor of the brain.

It's a drive.

And in fact, I think it's more powerful than the sex drive.

You know, if you ask somebody to go to bed with you,

and they say, "No, thank you,"

you certainly don't kill yourself or slip into a clinical depression.

But certainly, around the world,

people who are rejected in love will kill for it.

People live for love.

They kill for love.

They die for love.

They have songs, poems, novels,

sculptures, paintings, myths, legends.

In over 175 societies,

people have left their evidence of this powerful brain system.

I have come to think

it's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth

for both great joy and great sorrow.

And I've also come to think

that it's one of three basically different brain systems

that evolved from mating and reproduction.

One is the sex drive: the craving for sexual gratification.

W.H. Auden called it an "intolerable neural itch,"

and indeed, that's what it is.

It keeps bothering you a little bit, like being hungry.

The second of these three brain systems is romantic love:

that elation, obsession of early love.

And the third brain system is attachment:

that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.

And I think that the sex drive evolved to get you out there,

looking for a whole range of partners.

You can feel it when you're just driving along in your car.

It can be focused on nobody.

I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy

on just one individual at a time,

thereby conserving mating time and energy.

And I think that attachment, the third brain system,

evolved to enable you to tolerate this human being

at least long enough to raise a child together as a team.

So with that preamble,

I want to go into discussing the two most profound social trends.

One of the last 10,000 years

and the other, certainly of the last 25 years,

that are going to have an impact on these three different brain systems:

lust, romantic love and deep attachment to a partner.

The first is women working, moving into the workforce.

I've looked at 130 societies

through the demographic yearbooks of the United Nations.

Everywhere in the world, 129 out of 130 of them,

women are not only moving into the job market --

sometimes very, very slowly, but they are moving into the job market --

and they are very slowly closing that gap between men and women

in terms of economic power, health and education.

It's very slow.

For every trend on this planet, there's a counter-trend.

We all know of them, but nevertheless --

the Arabs say, "The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on."

And, indeed, that caravan is moving on.

Women are moving back into the job market.

And I say back into the job market, because this is not new.

For millions of years, on the grasslands of Africa,

women commuted to work to gather their vegetables.

They came home with 60 to 80 percent of the evening meal.

The double income family was the standard.

And women were regarded as just as economically,

socially and sexually powerful as men.

In short, we're really moving forward to the past.

Then, women's worst invention was the plow.

With the beginning of plow agriculture, men's roles became extremely powerful.

Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors,

but then with the industrial revolution and the post-industrial revolution

they're moving back into the job market.

In short, they are acquiring the status that they had a million years ago,

10,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago.

We are seeing now one of the most remarkable traditions

in the history of the human animal.

And it's going to have an impact.

I generally give a whole lecture

on the impact of women on the business community.

I'll say just a couple of things, and then go on to sex and love.

There's a lot of gender differences;

anybody who thinks men and women are alike

simply never had a boy and a girl child.

I don't know why they want to think that men and women are alike.

There's much we have in common,

but there's a whole lot that we do not have in common.

We are -- in the words of Ted Hughes,

"I think that we are like two feet. We need each other to get ahead."

But we did not evolve to have the same brain.

And we're finding more and more gender differences in the brain.

I'll only just use a couple and then move on to sex and love.

One of them is women's verbal ability.

Women can talk.

Women's ability to find the right word rapidly, basic articulation

goes up in the middle of the menstrual cycle,

when estrogen levels peak.

But even at menstruation, they're better than the average man.

Women can talk.

They've been doing it for a million years; words were women's tools.

They held that baby in front of their face,

cajoling it, reprimanding it, educating it with words.

And, indeed, they're becoming a very powerful force.

Even in places like India and Japan,

where women are not moving rapidly into the regular job market,

they're moving into journalism.

And I think that the television is like the global campfire.

We sit around it and it shapes our minds.

Almost always, when I'm on TV, the producer who calls me,

who negotiates what we're going to say,

is a woman.

In fact, Solzhenitsyn once said,

"To have a great writer is to have another government."

Today 54 percent of people who are writers in America are women.

It's one of many, many characteristics that women have

that they will bring into the job market.

They've got incredible people skills, negotiating skills.

They're highly imaginative.

We now know the brain circuitry of imagination, of long-term planning.

They tend to be web thinkers.

Because the female parts of the brain are better connected,

they tend to collect more pieces of data when they think,

put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes.

They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers,

what I call web thinkers.

Men tend to -- and these are averages --

tend to get rid of what they regard as extraneous,

focus on what they do,

and move in a more step-by-step thinking pattern.

They're both perfectly good ways of thinking.

We need both of them to get ahead.

In fact, there's many more male geniuses in the world.

And there's also many more male idiots in the world.

(Laughter)

When the male brain works well, it works extremely well.

And what I really think that we're doing is,

we're moving towards a collaborative society,

a society in which the talents of both men and women

are becoming understood and valued and employed.

But in fact, women moving into the job market

is having a huge impact on sex and romance and family life.

Foremost, women are starting to express their sexuality.

I'm always astonished when people come to me and say,

"Why is it that men are so adulterous?"

"Why do you think more men are adulterous than women?"

"Well, men are more adulterous!"

And I say, "Who do you think these men are sleeping with?"

(Laughter)

And -- basic math!

Anyway.

In the Western world,

women start sooner at sex, have more partners,

express less remorse for the partners that they do,

marry later, have fewer children,

leave bad marriages in order to get good ones.

We are seeing the rise of female sexual expression.

And, indeed, once again we're moving forward to the kind of sexual expression

that we probably saw on the grasslands of Africa a million years ago,

because this is the kind of sexual expression that we see

in hunting and gathering societies today.

We're also returning to an ancient form of marriage equality.

They're now saying that the 21st century

is going to be the century of what they call the "symmetrical marriage,"

or the "pure marriage," or the "companionate marriage."

This is a marriage between equals,

moving forward to a pattern

that is highly compatible with the ancient human spirit.

We're also seeing a rise of romantic love.

91 percent of American women and 86 percent of American men

would not marry somebody who had every single quality

they were looking for in a partner,

if they were not in love with that person.

People around the world, in a study of 37 societies,

want to be in love with the person that they marry.

Indeed, arranged marriages are on their way off this braid of human life.

I even think that marriages might even become more stable

because of the second great world trend.

The first one being women moving into the job market,

the second one being the aging world population.

They're now saying that in America,

that middle age should be regarded as up to age 85.

Because in that highest age category of 76 to 85,

as much as 40 percent of people have nothing really wrong with them.

So we're seeing there's a real extension of middle age.

For one of my books, I looked at divorce data in 58 societies.

And as it turns out, the older you get, the less likely you are to divorce.

So the divorce rate right now is stable in America,

and it's actually beginning to decline.

It may decline some more.

I would even say that with Viagra,

estrogen replacement, hip replacements

and the incredibly interesting women

-- women have never been as interesting as they are now.

Not at any time on this planet have women been so educated,

so interesting, so capable.

And so I honestly think that if there really was ever a time in human evolution

when we have the opportunity to make good marriages, that time is now.

However, there's always kinds of complications in this.

These three brain systems -- lust, romantic love and attachment --

don't always go together.

They can go together, by the way.

That's why casual sex isn't so casual.

With orgasm you get a spike of dopamine.

Dopamine's associated with romantic love,

and you can just fall in love with somebody

who you're just having casual sex with.

With orgasm, then you get a real rush of oxytocin and vasopressin --

those are associated with attachment.

This is why you can feel such a sense of cosmic union with somebody

after you've made love to them.

But these three brain systems: lust, romantic love and attachment,

aren't always connected to each other.

You can feel deep attachment to a long-term partner

while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else,

while you feel the sex drive for people unrelated to these other partners.

In short, we're capable of loving more than one person at a time.

In fact, you can lie in bed at night

and swing from deep feelings of attachment for one person

to deep feelings of romantic love for somebody else.

It's as if there's a committee meeting going on in your head

as you are trying to decide what to do.

So I don't think, honestly,

we're an animal that was built to be happy;

we are an animal that was built to reproduce.

I think the happiness we find, we make.

And I think, however,

we can make good relationships with each other.

So I want to conclude with two things.

I want to conclude with a worry,

and with a wonderful story.

The worry is about antidepressants.

Over 100 million prescriptions of antidepressants

are written every year in the United States.

And these drugs are going generic.

They are seeping around the world.

I know one girl who's been on these antidepressants,

SSRIs, serotonin-enhancing antidepressants -- since she was 13.

She's 23. She's been on them ever since she was 13.

I've got nothing against people who take them short term,

when they're going through something horrible.

They want to commit suicide or kill somebody else.

I would recommend it.

But more and more people in the United States

are taking them long term.

And indeed, what these drugs do is raise levels of serotonin.

And by raising levels of serotonin, you suppress the dopamine circuit.

Everybody knows that.

Dopamine is associated with romantic love.

Not only do they suppress the dopamine circuit,

but they kill the sex drive.

And when you kill the sex drive, you kill orgasm.

And when you kill orgasm,

you kill that flood of drugs associated with attachment.

The things are connected in the brain.

And when you tamper with one brain system,

you're going to tamper with another.

I'm just simply saying that a world without love is a deadly place.

So now --

(Applause)

Thank you.

I want to end with a story.

And then, just a comment.

I've been studying romantic love and sex and attachment for 30 years.

I'm an identical twin; I am interested in why we're all alike.

Why you and I are alike, why the Iraqis and the Japanese

and the Australian Aborigines and the people of the Amazon River

are all alike.

And about a year ago,

an Internet dating service, Match.com, came to me

and asked me if I would design a new dating site for them.

I said, "I don't know anything about personality. You know?

I don't know. Do you think you've got the right person?"

They said, "Yes."

It got me thinking about why it is that you fall in love

with one person rather than another.

That's my current project; it will be my next book.

There's all kinds of reasons

that you fall in love with one person rather than another.

Timing is important. Proximity is important.

Mystery is important.

You fall in love with somebody who's somewhat mysterious,

in part because mystery elevates dopamine in the brain,

probably pushes you over that threshold to fall in love.

You fall in love with somebody

who fits within what I call your "love map,"

an unconscious list of traits

that you build in childhood as you grow up.

And I also think that you gravitate to certain people,

actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.

And that's what I'm now contributing to this.

But I want to tell you a story, to illustrate.

I've been carrying on here about the biology of love.

I wanted to show you a little bit about the culture of it, too,

the magic of it.

It's a story that was told to me

by somebody who had heard it just from one --

probably a true story.

It was a graduate student -- I'm at Rutgers and my two colleagues --

Art Aron is at SUNY Stony Brook.

That's where we put our people in the MRI machine.

And this graduate student was madly in love with another graduate student,

and she was not in love with him.

And they were all at a conference in Beijing.

And he knew from our work

that if you go and do something very novel with somebody,

you can drive up the dopamine in the brain,

and perhaps trigger this brain system for romantic love.

(Laughter)

So he decided he'd put science to work.

And he invited this girl to go off on a rickshaw ride with him.

And sure enough -- I've never been in one,

but apparently they go all around the buses and the trucks

and it's crazy and it's noisy and it's exciting.

He figured that this would drive up the dopamine,

and she'd fall in love with him.

So off they go and she's squealing and squeezing him

and laughing and having a wonderful time.

An hour later they get down off of the rickshaw,

and she throws her hands up and she says,

"Wasn't that wonderful?"

And, "Wasn't that rickshaw driver handsome!"

(Laughter)

(Applause)

There's magic to love!

(Applause)

But I will end by saying that millions of years ago,

we evolved three basic drives:

the sex drive, romantic love

and attachment to a long-term partner.

These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brain.

They're going to survive as long as our species survives

on what Shakespeare called "this mortal coil."

Thank you.

Chris Anderson: Helen Fisher!

(Applause)