Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: I'm joined by Helen Fisher, a professor in the department of anthropology from Rutgers University from a studio in New York. Dr. Fisher welcome to "Springboard".
Dr. Helen Fisher: Thank you.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Talk about the notion of monogamy.
We heard about it in rodents what about humans are we a monogamous species.
Dr. Helen Fisher: Yes, we are. Only 3% of mammals bother to pair up and rear their children as a team and human beings do. When you take a look around the world the vast majority of both men and women form a pair bond and raise their children as a couple, as man and wife. Something like 91% of Americans marry by age 49. And I've looked in 97 societies, 92% of men and 93% of women do marry and, uh, the vast majority of them take only one spouse. That's the primary reproductive strategy.
People certainly do form harems, men form them when they have the opportunity to but you've got to be rich and good with -- at -- at collecting women. But most people...
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: -- And live in a society that condones it.
Dr. Helen Fisher: Absolutely. 84% of human cultures permit a man to take more than one man at a time but generally only men of high status who are very rich and older who can collect women. Most people in almost all societies everywhere are monogamous. This isn't to say we don't divorce, indeed we do around the world and people are adulterous and cheat but seems we have the brain circuitry orificeology to attach.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Does monogamy mean mating for life?
Dr. Helen Fisher: It doesn't in our species. Certainly in some. Beavers mate for life, a great many birds mate for life and taking a look at birds a great many birds do not pair for life but only for the breeding season. When you look around the world people tend to divorce during an around the fourth year of marriage. And all kinds of exceptions but it seems to be the rule.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Why four years?
Dr. Helen Fisher: I wondered myself and began to think maybe millions of years ago we had a breeding season, too, and it took a man and woman about four years to raise a child through infancy and so we evolved the tremendous drive to pair up I think we needed on the dangerous early grasslands of Africa.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: And when the infant could sustain itself, they didn't need to stay together?
Dr. Helen Fisher: I do not think the infant could sustain itself by age 4 but in hunting and gathering societies, small children after they have stopped -- have been weaned begin to join what we call the multi-age play group and so a 5-year-old will cared for much of the day by a 10-year-old and 15-year-old and others. So probably our ancestors evolved the drive to pair up at least through rear a single child through infancy and perhaps if the pair bonding wasn't going well break up and form another. Leaving the bond is a human drive to pair and brain circuitry for attachment and tendency to break up and pair again.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Go through your theory. What happens during the brain during each?
Dr. Helen Fisher: I think we have evolved three brain circuits or brain systems for mating. And one is lust, the craving for sexual gratification and know that is associated with high levels of testosterone in both men and women. Estrogen plays a role, but that's the basic chemistry. The second emotion system I think is romantic love when you see the person across the crowded room and suddenly feel a sense of elation and giddiness and can't stop thinking about the person and think about that person and --
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Don't eat, can't sleep; head over heels.
Dr. Helen Fisher: Right. I think that is a very different emotion system.
We do not know yet the brain circuitry of that, but I think it is high levels of hormone that is giving you that elation and focused thinking and perhaps low levels of serotonin, which we know in low levels often gives a sort of obsessive thinking. So, we're going to get to the bottom of that, myself and my research team, I hope.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Finally long-term attachment -- how is that different?
Dr. Helen Fisher: I think that long-term attachment is that sense of calm and peace and security that you can feel with a long-term partner. Some separation anxiety when apart. You go away on a business trip and need to call him on the phone to feel a bit better but it is a security, an emotional union.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: What's the physiology of that?
Dr. Helen Fisher: I think that we've now discovered among prairie voles and among sheep and other mammals that probably the attachment system associated with high levels of vasopressin and oxytocin, different chemicals in the brain.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Does that tend to attachment systems, not just romantic love?
Dr. Helen Fisher: I think so. I guess nature gets a few good designs and works on those themes. I think you can feel romantically involved with your baby or can fall in love with skiing or swimming or a kind of sport, et cetera. I think they are basic -- we do not know yet by the way -- but I think they are basic emotion systems that go in a lot of directions. I think the sex drive basically evolved to get you out there looking for anybody at all. You can feel it when you are driving your car. The romantic love I think evolved to conserve our mating energy to get rid of stupid possibilities and focus our mating energy on just one. Then I think attachment evolved so we could tolerate this individual at least long enough to raise a single child as a team.
Rebecca Roberts, Springboard: Dr. Fisher, thank you so much for being on "Springboard."
Dr. Helen Fisher: Thank you.
Dr. Helen Fisher, Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, Rutgers University
Author of 3 books on love:
The Sex Contract
Anatomy of Love
The First Sex - The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing The World
An online chat interview with Dr. Fisher (2001)
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