Ideas worth spreading

Technology hasn't changed love. Here's why

2,347,299 views |

Helen Fisher |

TEDSummit

• June 2016

In our tech-driven, interconnected world, we've developed new ways and rules to court each other, but the fundamental principles of love have stayed the same, says anthropologist Helen Fisher. Our faster connections, she suggests, are actually leading to slower, more intimate relationships. At 12:20, couples therapist and relationship expert Esther Perel steps in to make an important point -- that while love itself stays the same, technology has affected the way we form and end relationships.

In our tech-driven, interconnected world, we've developed new ways and rules to court each other, but the fundamental principles of love have stayed the same, says anthropologist Helen Fisher. Our faster connections, she suggests, are actually leading to slower, more intimate relationships. At 12:20, couples therapist and relationship expert Esther Perel steps in to make an important point -- that while love itself stays the same, technology has affected the way we form and end relationships.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Take Helen Fisher's personality test. This questionnaire is based on extensive scientific research which suggests that humanity has evolved four broad basic styles of thinking and behaving linked with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen/oxytocin systems in the brain.

About the speaker

Helen Fisher

Anthropologist, expert on love

See speaker profile

Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. She’s best known as an expert on romantic love.

Andrew J. Cherlin | Vintage, 2010 | Book

The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today

This book by a leading American sociologist, Andrew Cherlin, gives a host of excellent data on current marriage and divorce patterns. Among its points, it mirrors my belief that a difficult 21st-century issue is how to balance our human drive for commitment and our taste for autonomy.

Stephanie Coontz | Penguin Books, 2006 | Book

Marriage, a History: from Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage

This book by a leading historian, Stephanie Coontz, gives myriad facts and a sweeping history of that subject dear to us all: love. She smartly shows how and why marriage has changed more in the past 100 years than in the past 10,000.

Eric Klinenberg | Penguin Books, 2013 | Book

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg has written a compelling book about the huge number of men and women who live alone for long periods of time (yet are hyper-connected) in societies as different at Japan, Sweden and the USA. I would add that at no time in our long prehistory did people live alone. This is an entirely new social phenomenon—with many ramifications.

John Colapinto | Harper Perennial, 2006 | Book

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

This is one of the most important books I have ever read, perhaps because I am an identical twin. It is a vivid and tragic account, showing how little most people understand about sex, gender and human nature. Colapinto gets to the heart of the nature/nurture controversy and overturns decades of psychological research.

Peter B. Gray and Justin R. Garcia | Harvard University Press, 2013 | Book

Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior

This book is everything you ever wanted to know about sex—from theories of female orgasm to gender differences to sex as we age. It’s an elegant anthropological and evolutionary romp through all of the newest data on humankind’s oldest fascination: sex.

Geoffrey Miller | Anchor, 2001 | Book

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

Miller’s book picks up where Darwin left off—explaining the evolution (by sexual selection) of almost all of our human intellectual triumphs—from our human moral virtue to our math acuity, musical intelligence and sense of humor. As Miller says, “The mind evolved by moonlight.”

Learn more

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Take Helen Fisher's personality test. This questionnaire is based on extensive scientific research which suggests that humanity has evolved four broad basic styles of thinking and behaving linked with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen/oxytocin systems in the brain.