Helen Fisher (anthropologist)

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Helen Fisher (born 1945) is an anthropology professor and human behavior researcher at the Rutgers University and is one of the major researchers in the field of interpersonal chemistry.

By many accounts, including her own, Fisher is considered the world’s leading expert on the topic of love.¹ Presently, Fisher is the most referenced scholar in the love research community. In 2005, she helped to structure the chemistry-based chemistry.com pair-matching website using both hormonal-based and personality-based matching techniques.

Fisher distinguishes between four personality types each of which she associates with a body chemical:

explorer - dopamine
negotiator - estrogen
director - testosterone
builder - serotonin.

In 2006, her MRI research, which showed that the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus become active when people are madly in love, was featured in the (February) National Geographic cover-page article: "Love - the Chemical Reaction".

[edit] References

Fisher, Helen (1983). The Sex Contract – the Evolution of Human Behavior. Quill. ISBN 0-688-01599-9.
Fisher, Helen (1993). Anatomy of Love – a Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. Quill. ISBN 0-449-90897-6.
Fisher, Helen (1999). The First Sex – the Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing the World. Random House. ISBN 0-679-44909-4.
Fisher, Helen (2004). Why We Love – the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-6913-5.