Why we love who we love

There's a new book out called "Why Him? Why Her? Finding Real Love by Analyzing Your Personality Type," by Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist. Here's a link to an article by Martin Bashir, Rob Wallace and Connie Clark from ABC's "20/20": http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=6734449&page=1 Fisher is apparently the woman behind the questionnaire used by the dating site Chemistry (http://www.chemistry.com/). Based on brain research, she thinks that there are four broad personality types associated with four specific neurotransmitters and hormones: dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen. According to the article, "Fisher believes we are all some combination of these four types, which she has named the explorer (dopamine), the builder (serotonin), the director (testosterone) and the negotiator (estrogen). Good examples of the risk-taking explorers, Fisher said, would be John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway and Angelina Jolie. Colin Powell, she said, exemplifies the calm, traditional builder. Directors are analytical, tough-minded and decisive, and Fisher believes Bill Gates is a perfect example. Negotiators, on the other hand, are emotionally expressive and empathetic. A good example? Bill Clinton. 'He says, "I feel your pain," Fisher laughed."



She decided to design a questionnaire to try to elicit which of these four types each person is, and see how they matched up through the Chemistry dating site. It turns out that "explorers go for other explorers, and builders go for other builders. But the high testosterone directors go for the high-estrogen negotiators, and vice versa."



The end of the article includes a 3-question quiz. I suspected I'm a negotiator. I got "director" for the first question, "negotiator" for the second question, and very low testosterone for the third question, which is more negotiator-like and very anti-director. The next time I'm at the bookstore, I'll have to look through this book. Or you can go to http://www.whyhimwhyher.com/ to take the complete questionnaire.