Your face and head give more information about you than any other body part.
— Helen Fisher
We're not very dangerous animals; we don't have a horn like a rhino or quills like a porcupine.
Women apparently are quite drawn to men who have differences rather than similarities in their histocompatibility system. They pick it up by smell, and they can pick it up from kissing.
Until recently, we regarded love as supernatural. We were willing to study the brain chemistry of fear and depression and anger but not love.
Hair that gleams can send a clear sign that you're young and in your prime, whatever your actual age.
Experiences shape the brain, but the brain shapes the way we view experiences, too.
I was married and divorced at 23.
Women are very attracted to a low voice because it's linked to testosterone, which for millions of years was a sign that men had very good spacial skills and would have been very good at hunting and finding their way back home.
Men and women are like two feet; they can help each other get ahead.
From my studies of genetics and neuroscience I have come to believe that people fall into four broad personality types - each influenced by a different brain chemical: I call them the Explorer, Builder, Director, and Negotiator.
You know, when you've been dumped, the one thing you love to do is just forget about this human being, and then go on with your life - but no, you just love them harder.
I think the happiness we find, we make.
When you fight, anger drives up testosterone in both men and women.
Real competition can drive up testosterone, which boosts libido.
Women like signs of money and education - things that indicate that not only is this guy going to have some resources, but he's also willing to share them.
If two very different people pool their DNA, they'll create more genetic variety, and their young will come to the job of parenting with a wider array of skills.
In courtship, who wins and who loses will determine who passes on their DNA to tomorrow.
Any time you choose not to hide your tattoo, you're limiting your social sphere, because they're not popular in big business.
The human brain is built to compare; it's Darwinian to consider an alternative when one presents itself.
There's a lot of talk about the positive aspects of love. We as a society downplay the danger, the anxiety, and the disappointment. We romanticize romance.
A Rolex watch or an expensive car are the things guys often use to show status, wealth, and basic desirability.
There exists no culture in which adultery is unknown, no cultural device or code that extinguishes philandering.
I have always been interested in how you can walk into a room and there will be 40 people there and you are immediately drawn to one.
There's more than one person on the planet. When you're madly in love, that's not what you think.
You size up someone physically in less than one second - too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too old, too young, too stuffy, too scruffy.
Women, it turns out, are built to lead - particularly in the modern world.
Men want to think women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.
Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it.
Almost always, when I'm on TV, the producers who call me, who negotiate what we're going to say, is a woman.
Once you fall for someone, their smell can be a powerful thing. Women will wear their boyfriends' T-shirts, and throughout tales in history men have held on to their lover's handkerchief.
Touch is the mother of the senses. Not only are women more sensitive when they touch, but they're also more sensitive to being touched.
Women have a better sense of smell than men do, and it's even sharper in the middle of their menstrual cycle, when estrogen levels peak and women are more likely to be deciding whether a man's attractive.
We're apt to fall in love with those who are mysterious and challenging to us.
Like most animals, we're wired to associate height with power.
It's almost as if men who get tribal tattoos are trying to signal that they are dangerous, they're to be respected, and they're powerful.
If we remained perpetually infatuated, we couldn't eat, sleep or work.
Every time you cuddle with your children, you're likely to be driving down your testosterone.
For men, being too put-together implies femininity.
Young women today do not marry the men they met in high school, or even the one they go out with at college, because they do not need to.
You can be instantly scared. You can be instantly happy. So why can't you be instantly romantically in love? I think when it happens, it's because you are ready to fall in love.
Saliva has testosterone and estrogen. When you kiss, you're having a chemical experience.
Globalization requires taking a broad contextual and long-term view.
We are wired to find love.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
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.
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.
Women spend their lives trying to look good for men. So a woman who feels she's sending the right visual signals is pleased with herself.
Women have a better sense of color and a better color memory. They're more likely to notice when something doesn't match; more likely to notice what you're wearing.
When you can't have someone but you're not willing to accept that, you try harder and become more extreme about it. Either you win the person back or you drive him away.
A woman of 40 or 50 or 60 can take estrogen replacements, get facelifts, spend her money in bars.
