Why Him? Why Her?
Brain info linked to love that lasts
By Heather Warlick
Look at your fingers. Is your ring finger longer than your index finger? You might be a “Builder.” Are you a Democrat? So are many “Explorers.”
“Negotiators” are skilled at emotional expression and dealing with people and “Directors” are competitive and want to be the top-dog.
Says who? Says Helen Fisher, PhD., a biological anthropologist who has been studying love and personalities for 30 years. Through a questionnaire of 40,000 people she created for Chemistry.com, she concluded that there are four predominant personality types and that your genetic traits determine your type. Click here to take the quiz.
“I’ve written five books, I’ve worked on love for over 30 years and I finally understand people,” Fisher said. “I finally understand them on a level I never thought I would. I also understand why various relationships just never end up really working.”
In her latest book, “Why Him? Why Her?” Fisher reveals the results of her two most recent studies — one defining personality types and the other describing the nuances of romantic relationships between individuals of different and the same personality types.
But before you can analyze your relationship based on your personality type, you have to learn what type you are. Your personality type, Fisher says, has everything to do with your brain chemistry.
In “Builders,” serotonin is more prevalent. “Explorers” express higher levels of dopamine. Estrogen and testosterone influence the personality traits of “Negotiators” and “Directors” respectively.
“What was surprising was how real these patterns are,” Fisher said. Through an ongoing study of saliva and urine, she’s finding an amazing consistency with the personality types and the predominant brain chemicals that influence them.
Everyone has a primary personality type and a secondary type, Fisher said.
Fisher explains that personality is made of two major components: biology and character, much like nature and nurture. Your temperament is the biology or nature side of your personality — those traits you inherited from your parents such as curiosity, aggressiveness and stubbornness. Your character is everything you’ve gained from experiences — the “nurture” side of your personality.
Fisher even discovered by analyzing profiles on Chemistry.com that each personality type tends to use certain words more often in their self-descriptions. Explorers favor the word “adventure.” Builders use the word “family” most often. Directors like “intellectual” and Negotiators love “passion.”
Learning your type can help you understand both your strengths and your weaknesses and can ultimately help you function better in all your relationships. Go online to www.Chemistry.com to take Fisher’s quiz or just read the following descriptions to find out what type you are.
What’s Your Type?
Builders are relaxed, social and family-oriented people. Common traits of the Builder are a strong sense of duty, respectability, morality and traditions. They respect authority and rules and are trustworthy with plans and schedules.
Builders are strongly influenced by serotonin, the “mother of all neurotransmitters.” No personality type is ruled solely by one chemical. Serotonin can elevate levels of estrogen and can trigger the release of oxytocin which together contribute to the Builder’s affability, need to attach to family and community and their tact and managerial skills, Fisher writes.
“Moreover, serotonin can suppress testosterone activity, particularly in a brain center associated with fear, anger and aggression — the amygdala,” Fisher writes. This explains the Builder’s tendency to be calm and self confident. And since serotonin suppresses dopamine activity, Builders tend to be far more cautious than Explorers.
The down side? Builders always know the “right” way to do something and can be closed-minded and stubborn. They are emotionally rigid, ultra-realistic and cautious. These traits can turn into pessimism that can turn to fatalism. Builders can be stoic, a trait that can evolve into self-loathing or feelings of moral superiority.
The Director is ruled by the testosterone system in both men and women. Directors are competitive and strive to be the top dog. They’re pragmatic, tough-minded and decisive. They are objective, rational and logical and pay close attention to details.
Directors are persistent and willing to take unpopular and even dangerous steps to find the truth. Directors understand what makes things work. They are skilled at understanding machinery and other rule-based systems and they often excel at sports. They pursue their interests with focus and a thoroughness that can become exclusive of everything around them.
Directors prize self-control, are independent and exacting. Oddly, Fisher writes, many are musical and particularly adept at understanding the structure of music. Directors are the heroes that run into burning buildings to save strangers.
The fact that fewer women are Directors indicates that the traits of the Director are associated with the predominantly male hormone testosterone, which both sexes produce, but men produce more.
The down side? Directors often have trouble containing their emotions. Though they prize self control, they are prone to anger, exploding into rage when they’re hurt, disappointed or frustrated. An uncontrollable impulse to “fight or flee” can cause Directors to lash out and even become violent.
Explorers are the adventurers. They prefer the “road less traveled” and thrive on the unpredictable. In “Why Him? Why Her?” Fisher writes, “These people seek the thrills of physical adventurer. Some teeter on the brink of bankruptcy as they invent the newest widget. Some gravitate to wild sex, gambling alcohol or street drugs; they like being out of control. Some revel in bizarre music, exotic art, counterculture social activities or avant-garde ideas. And many simply collect stamps or antiques, stay at home and read, or take advantage of every theater, movie or musical event in town.”
Exporers are curious and creative, generous and restless, energetic and spontaneous and often impulsive. Their adventure-seeking disposition is largely inherited, Fisher writes, and the contributing genes involved have been discovered and labeled DRD4. This gene controls much of the dopamine activity in the brain.
The down side? Explorers can be easily bored, narcissistic and reclusive when forced into tedious social schedules. They can be unpredictable and unreliable because of their spontaneity. They tend to be poor planners and disorganized. Disorderliness, Fisher writes, is associated with dopamine.
The Negotiator is “the philosopher king.” These individuals see the big picture and instinctively know what others are thinking or feeling. They are emotionally expressive individuals, keen at reading facial and physical cues in others and also in themselves.
They are introspective and self-analytical and take great pleasure journeying into the depths of their thoughts and motives. Fisher calls the Negotiator’s thought processes “web thinking” which she defines as “the natural ability to collect many bits of data as you think, weigh the importance of these variables and envision the relationships between them — the ability to think in webs of factors, not straight lines.”
Negotiators are skilled at finding patterns, reading between the lines and seeing the larger concepts and principles from assembled facts.
Estrogen is the influential brain chemical in negotiators, a fact that is reinforced by Fisher’s study which found that more women are Negotiators than men. People who were exposed to more estrogen in the womb often have more connections between the brain’s two hemispheres.
“In short, fetal estrogen constructs a well-connected brain — contributing to the Negotiator’s ability to collect and integrate a broad range of information,” Fisher writes.
The down side? Negotiators are so skilled at seeing the big picture, they can ignore important details. They can appear scatterbrained and indecisive. Their emotional expressivity can make them seem fussy and they can become overly trusting and gullible.
Their aversion to confrontation can result in back-stabbing and they can be vicious with words. Because they seek connection, they can seem needy and need constant reassurance. They can be easily offended and hold a grudge for a long time.
Who Loves Whom?
Why are we attracted to some people and not to others? When all things are generally equal: looks, education, socioeconomic status and religion, why do some people find an instant connection? Chemistry.com asked this question to Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who has been studying love for 30 years. The results of her mate choice study of 28,128 people are part of her newest book, “Why Him? Why Her?”
“I started to think that maybe your biology contributes to who you love. I mean, maybe we’re naturally drawn to certain chemical types and not other types,” she said. Based on the four personality types she identified, Builder, Explorer, Negotiator and Director, she began to see that certain combinations of types are drawn together more often than other combinations.
Opposites attract, right? Or, maybe we’re looking for someone just like us. According to the results of Fisher’s mate study, some people are attracted to their opposites and some are attracted to their matches.
“We know that you tend to fall in love with somebody from your same socioeconomic background, same general level of intelligence, same general level of good looks, same religious values,” she said. “We tend to fall in love with somebody who can give us what we need in exchange for giving them what they need. Timing is important, proximity is important.”
But beyond those particulars, Fisher says that some types naturally gravitate toward each other. Great marriages exist between members of all types, but in “Why Him? Why Her?,” Fisher analyzes all the possible combinations, comments on the strengths and weaknesses of those matches and gives couples insight into their relationships.
So, who loves whom and why? Here are Fisher’s most winning romantic combinations of types.
Explorer/Explorer
Explorers are attracted to other Explorers because they crave excitement; they want optimism, impulsivity and curiosity in their partner. The Explorer/Explorer match is generally strong because Explorers love adventure and want a partner to share their spontaneity. But this match can have problems. Since both are willing to tolerate risks, two Explorers can find themselves in disastrous situations. And Explorers are not usually very introspective so the pair often avoids difficult discussions.
Builder/Builder
Like Explorers, Builders are attracted to each other. They are most likely to marry each other, to say they are happy in their marriage and less likely to divorce than other combinations. Builders like bringing people and community together and enjoy working together. They are successful at building large circles of close friends, making sensible decisions about money, family and feelings together and value security above almost everything.
Director/Negotiator
Unlike Builders and Explorers who are often attracted to people of their own type, Directors and Negotiators are often drawn to each other. They compliment each other as Negotiators see the big picture while Directors focus on smaller pieces of the puzzle. Negotiators are skilled at seeing all angles without taking action and Directors are decisive yet don’t often analyze ancillary data. The two types are also compatible socially. Negotiators are good at smoothing over Directors’ inappropriate comments and Directors admire the diplomatic nature of Negotiators.
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interesting