She is the founder of Liberos, a Los Angeles-based independent research center that works in collaboration with the University of Georgia and the University of Pittsburgh to study human sexual behavior and develop sexuality-related biotechnology. Scientists who study attraction take into consideration everything from genetics, psychology, and family history to traumas, which have been shown to impact a person's ability to bond or feel desire. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University, Match.
In each stage, your body chemistry behaves differently. It turns out that "chemistry" is, at least in part, actual chemistry.
Biochemistry, specifically. In the lust and attraction phases, your body is directing the show, as people can feel desire without knowing anything personal about the object of that desire. Lust, Fisher asserts in a seminal paper [ PDF ], is nothing more than the existence of a sex drive, or "the craving for sexual gratification," she writes. It's a sensation driven by estrogens and androgens, the female and male sex hormones, based in the biological drive to reproduce. Attraction may be influenced less than lust by physiological factors—the appeal of someone's features, or the way they make you laugh—but your body is still calling the shots at this stage, pumping you full of the hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine, effecting your brain in a way that's not unlike the way illicit substances do.
Fisher has collaborated multiple times on the science of attraction with social psychologist Arthur Aron , a research professor at Stony Brook University in New York. Aron and his wife Elaine , who is also a psychologist, are known for studying what makes relationships begin—and last. In a study in Frontiers in Psychology , the researchers proposed that "romantic love is a natural and often positive addiction that evolved from mammalian antecedents by 4 million years ago as a survival mechanism to encourage hominin pair-bonding and reproduction, seen cross-culturally today.
In the attraction phase, your body produces increased amounts of dopamine, the feel-good chemical that is also responsible for pain relief. Using fMRI brain imaging, Aron's studies have shown that "if you're thinking about a person you're intensely in love with, your brain activates the dopamine reward system, which is the same system that responds to cocaine," he tells Mental Floss.
Earlier, Fisher's paper found that new couples often show "increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship. The attachment phase is characterized by increases in oxytocin and vasopressin; these hormones are thought to promote bonding and positive social behaviors to sustain connections over time in order to fulfill parental duties. Most people can tell if they're attracted to someone in the first 90 seconds after they meet.
April Masini, who regularly gives relationship advice on ABC Entertainment News and has authored books like Date Out of Your League , suggests that women are naturally attracted to men who exude confidence and passion, and who seem to lead exciting lives. Heterosexual women tend to be physically or sexually attracted to men with traditionally masculine features such as a muscular frame, a square jaw, big nose and small eyes. These physical traits often signify higher levels of testosterone, and are more common in "alpha males.
Men are instinctively attracted to particular types of women too. Large breasts and long hair tend to catch men's eyes, but Dr. Steven Platek, a neuroscientist, psychologist, and head researcher at Georgia Gwinnett College, reports that men's brains are particularly wired to be attracted to curvy women — especially women with wide hips and skinny waists.
Statistically, those women also tend to be the ones who are most fertile. According to Dr. Margaret Paul, a relationship expert who's appeared on Oprah and has her Ph. Paul, the alpha males to whom many women tend to be more attracted also tend to be more sexually promiscuous.
Many women say that when they're looking for a long-term relationship partner, they're actually looking for the opposite of an alpha-male: men who smile more, seem cooperative, and have more feminine features like full lips, wide eyes, and thin eyebrows.
Strangely enough, frequent smiles and delicate features tend to be on a man's list of desired qualities in a long-term mate as well. But guys, watch out! One study found that women prefer men with low voices , especially just before they start ovulating. There could be something inherently biological in this, as deeper voices have been linked to producing healthier children , and in the wild, lower pitch is associated with being bigger.
According to another study , people who reported being more sexually experienced and sexually active were rated to have more attractive voices by strangers. Research points to us being attracted to people who are similar to us — both physically and in personality. For example, research from St Andrews showed we are attracted to the features that our parents had when we were born, such as eye colour.
This could be because we see them as our first caregiver, and associate positive feelings with their features. Research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that spouses tend to be more genetically similar than two individuals chosen at random. And an article published in Psychological Science found that if someone looks similar to ourselves, we are more likely to trust them.
But sometimes, opposites do attract. For instance, if you've lived a sheltered life, you might gravitate towards people who have had extremely different experiences to you. There may be some biological basis to opposites attracting, too. When it comes to reproduction, a bit of variety works in your favour. For instance, the major histocompatibility complex MHC is a part of the immune system that helps cells recognise foreign molecules.
When the MHC is vastly different from your mate's, this decreases the danger of mating with someone you're related to, and increases the genetic variability of any offspring you have — meaning they're more likely to be healthier with a better immune system. As people mature, they tend to learn more about themselves. This can work in your favour when looking for a partner, because you're more likely to know what you want and what's important to you.
People transfer about 80 million bacteria when they kiss each other , and yet they keep doing it. Not only does kissing stimulate the release of oxytocin, but the taste of another person also helps with biological attraction.
When it comes to heterosexual relationships, several studies have pointed to health being a deciding factor in what people find attractive. It's not necessarily about body shape and size — although low BMI is sometimes a reason, based on distorted social norms.
Generally, if someone looks healthy — they sleep enough, exercise, and eat well — this will probably show on the outside. And not just in the way they look, but in the way they behave, too.
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