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[narrator] Hey, you.
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Do you usually fall
for the cool, rebellious type?
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Or are you more into the brooding artist?
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Do you vibe with shy and nerdy
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or charming and flirty?
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Are you all about guys? Hmm.
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Maybe you also like girls.
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Does it matter?
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Lanky, ripped, buzz cuts,
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man buns, full beards, strong brows,
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small breasts, big butts...
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-[chattering]
-[narrator] Is it more about their smile
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-or how they make you laugh?
-[laughs]
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[narrator] Are you attracted to people
you're embarrassed about,
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-so you keep it a secret?
-[gasps]
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[narrator] We all have a type
or a few types.
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-I know I do.
-[woman] Oh!
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[narrator]
So where do these types come from?
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Why are we attracted to some people...
and not others?
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I think you're cute.
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[theme music playing]
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[Justin Timberlake] I mean, you know it
if you have a chemistry with somebody.
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If I'm vibin' that person, then that's...
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You know, don't think about it too much.
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[man] What you're sniffing
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and searching for
are the smells of somebody
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who you think might be
genetically compatible with you.
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[narrator 2] Our brains are designed
to latch onto people's attractive features
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on our quest to find the right mate.
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My body temperature changes. Um...
[clicks tongue]
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And I get-- I get that, like,
warm, fuzzy feeling
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usually, like, in the, you know, the guts.
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And then it kind of, like,
moves down the body.
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[narrator] In the moment of attraction,
your brain floods you with hormones
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that make you feel...
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[woman 1] Warm... and tingly,
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and it's like my hair stands on end.
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All of my senses feel like they're awake.
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My heart flutters.
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[man] My heart is beating extremely fast.
I don't know what to say.
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I'm shy. Sometimes I talk way too fast.
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[narrator] Dopamine gives you
the same pleasurable boost
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-as eating sugar or taking drugs,
-[person inhales]
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with the same powerful cravings.
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[woman 2] I feel myself, like,
wanting to banter
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or wanting to engage in, like, a debate
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or, like, looking at their arms.
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I'm, like, super into arms. [laughs]
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[narrator] And then there's norepinephrine
and adrenaline.
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The fight-or-flight hormones.
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I might get a little nervous feeling,
a little anxious...
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or I get really excited.
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[narrator] Which can make it hard to sleep
and eat.
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In France, they call the moment
of attraction "coup de foudre"
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-or a "lightning bolt."
-[thunder rumbles]
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[narrator] In Arabic, it's "hawa," a wind.
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In China, "yuanfen," a fated force.
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And in Japan, they say "koi no yokan,"
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the feeling when you meet someone
that you're bound to fall in love.
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How do I know if I'm attracted to someone?
Um...
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It's just kind of this, like,
magnetic... [laughs]
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Like, it's just kind of like...
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I just feel drawn to that person.
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When you're attracted to somebody,
you shouldn't really be able to explain it
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beyond just, like,
I'm attracted to them, right?
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It should just be visceral,
and you should know it.
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[narrator]
But humans have tried to explain it.
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I mean, how could we not?
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And we have all kinds of theories.
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An astrologer would say,
if you're a Taurus,
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try to match with a Capricorn.
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-But a Sagittarius? No way.
-[buzzer sounds]
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[narrator]
Indian astrologers have long used
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an intricate, 36-point analysis
to match the bride and groom.
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You need at least 18 points
for a successful marriage.
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And then, in 2015, an article went viral
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that claimed when two strangers
asked each other these 36 questions,
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it's led to love.
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Questions like,
"What is your most treasured memory?"
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"What is your most terrible memory?"
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And "Do you have a secret hunch
about how you will die?"
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According to the magazine Cosmo,
you can make anyone fall in love with you
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in 12 easy steps, including:
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eye contact,
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focusing on the ways you're similar,
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hanging around them a lot,
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and, uh, "love them"?
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Okay, sure.
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But scientists, for decades,
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said it pretty much all came down
to our genes,
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and we're all attracted to the same type:
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a fit and fertile mating partner.
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Because we're animals,
we just want to reproduce.
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[man]
More symmetric men smell better to women,
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specifically to women
who are at the fertile phase
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of the menstrual cycle.
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[narrator 2] Men are thought to have
a preference for curved hips,
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because this signals enough fat deposits
on the hips
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for health and fertility.
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[narrator 3]
Men choose women with large breasts
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because they're seen
as good child-rearing material.
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So, there is a sense in which the body
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of a woman has been designed
through evolution
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for the delectation of males.
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[narrator]
Maybe that's why male video game designers
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make pretty much every female character
look like this...
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'cause they're more fertile. Mm-hmm.
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There's definitely an evolutionary
component to attraction,
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but I think we have to be really careful
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in distinguishing
between "just so" stories:
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Men like women with big breasts
because it's good for the species.
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There is no evidence of any link
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between large breasts and a pretty face
and fertility, all right?
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If that were true,
our planet would be populated
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only with beautiful, large-breasted women,
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and that is obviously not true.
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One of the things
we find quite consistently
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is that the social culture
in which you grow up
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and which you live in
has an impact on your body size ideal.
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[narrator]
Viren traveled to a region of South Africa
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with incredibly high rates of HIV
and conducted a study,
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asking Zulu men living there
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to rate a series of photos of women
with different body sizes.
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On average, the men found this body size
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just as attractive as this one,
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while all these body sizes were rated
as less attractive.
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Being extremely thin,
in that particular context,
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was associated with HIV.
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[narrator]
Viren also showed these images to Zulu men
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who had recently moved to the UK.
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Those men rated this body size
as the ideal...
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and rated these body sizes
as less attractive.
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The ideal body size changed very quickly
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to match what was ideal in the UK,
which was a relatively thin body.
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[narrator] And if humans are just like
any other animal,
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something else doesn't make sense.
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In a lot of animal species,
the males are the ones
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with the pressure to look pretty
and impress the females.
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Like in birds, where they get pretty sexy,
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because they often have to compete
for mates.
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But mating
in the human world looks different.
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A 1989 study of 37 cultures
around the world found that
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men care more about their female partners
being attractive and young...
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as in "fertile," to have more babies
to pass on their genes,
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while women cared more
about financial capacity,
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ambition, and industriousness.
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As in, they were or were going to be rich
to provide for all those babies.
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And especially if you watch a lot
of reality TV, that feels true,
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because these shows play up
those different motives.
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[woman 1] I know you're traveling a lot,
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so thank you for letting me borrow
the plane. I really appreciate it.
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[Ronnie] Stereotypes for a guido,
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the guy that always looks prettier
than his girlfriend,
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which is completely unacceptable.
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I can't be with a girl
that doesn't look prettier than me.
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[woman 2] Bri, how old are you?
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-So, I am 21.
-Oh.
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[narrator] A study of profile pictures
on the dating app Tinder
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also seemed to back this story.
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Straight women
were more likely than men
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to take selfies angled from above,
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so their eyes and foreheads looked big,
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and everything else looked smaller.
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So they look younger, aka, more fertile.
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While men were more likely
to use selfies angled from below,
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so they look taller and more dominant.
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In the animal world, that means
"better able to acquire resources."
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In the human world, that means "rich."
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But a 2001 study that reviewed
half a century of data
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found that as more women entered
the workplace and made their own money,
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they started caring more about being
with a good-looking guy.
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And men started caring more
about being with a woman
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with good financial prospects.
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[Viren Swami]
The idea that we are simply animals
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that only really care about reproducing,
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-seems incredibly reductive.
-[frog croaks]
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It's not simply a biological drive
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to have sex with that individual
so you can produce offspring.
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Now, I'm not saying that
that doesn't happen
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and that that's not shaping
how we might behave
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in some situations.
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The point, more generally,
is that to have a relationship,
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to form a relationship with an individual,
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or even just to have sex
with an individual
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requires so much more than just biology.
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[narrator] Even identical twins...
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same genes, same upbringing,
same culture...
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don't all have the same type.
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In 2015, researchers had hundreds
of identical twins rate faces
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and plotted the results.
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Each dot represents a twin pair.
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The X-axis is one twin's rating,
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and the Y-axis is the other twin's rating.
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If the twins all agreed with each other,
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you'd expect the correlations
to look like this.
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But it didn't.
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The researchers found that a lot
of what we're attracted to
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comes down
to unique environmental factors,
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as in your individual life history.
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I think I've always had a little bit
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of the bad boy that I was attracted to.
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[laughing] And that keeps coming back
over and over again.
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But I had--
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You know, my father was a--
had a little of the "bad boy" in him.
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I used to never like dating people
who looked like me.
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And then, I don't know, recently,
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I've been mistaken
for people that I've been attracted to.
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[laughing] So, it's like,
"This person actually looks just like me."
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So, I guess it's about
loving the self ultimately, you know?
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All the guys that I like
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end up looking like the stuffed animals
I had when I was a kid.
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[laughs] So I'm like, "Oh,
maybe I'm just looking for security
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00:10:04,687 --> 00:10:06,272
and comfort that way."
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00:10:06,355 --> 00:10:10,109
Generally, what a lot
of evolutionary psychology suggests
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00:10:10,192 --> 00:10:13,613
is that as long as you are having
enough sex
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00:10:13,738 --> 00:10:15,823
with other sex partners to reproduce,
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it really doesn't matter
what else you're attracted to.
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Really, evolution doesn't care
what else you do with sexuality.
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[narrator] Identical twins don't always
have the same sexuality either.
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In fact, a gay twin is more likely
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to have a twin that's straight than gay.
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Researchers found when it comes
to sexual orientation,
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environmental factors play
a much more important role than genes.
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For women,
they're at least four times as important.
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00:10:42,808 --> 00:10:46,812
But environmental factors, in this case,
doesn't mean culture or upbringing.
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So, I think when we talk
about environment,
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00:10:50,066 --> 00:10:52,777
we're often thinking,
"Oh, your friends or your parents."
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00:10:52,860 --> 00:10:54,987
But when geneticists are talking
about the environment,
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we're talking about literally everything
that's not a gene.
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That's the placenta, right?
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That's an environment, too.
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[narrator]
The womb is everyone's first environment,
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00:11:05,581 --> 00:11:06,666
and what happens there
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00:11:06,749 --> 00:11:09,543
may affect who you're attracted to
when you grow up.
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00:11:10,002 --> 00:11:13,381
The amount and timing of hormones
a fetus is exposed to
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may play a role.
237
00:11:14,799 --> 00:11:17,468
And for males,
so could maternal antibodies
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that target a certain brain protein made
by the Y chromosome.
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00:11:22,098 --> 00:11:24,892
In some women,
those can build up over time
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with every male baby she has.
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Which may explain why gay men,
on average,
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have more older brothers
than straight men.
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There are plenty
of environmental influences
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that are as fixed as any gene.
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So, it's important to remember
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that "genetic" doesn't mean "fixed,"
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and "environmental"
doesn't mean "unfixed."
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The gene environment balance
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for a trait doesn't really say anything
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about the fixedness of that trait.
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As a child I was like,
"Oh, no, I just like boys.
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I just like boys."
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And my mother would always say to me,
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"If you liked girls, too, it'd be okay."
Like, she knew.
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So, as I've grown up
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and as I've started experiencing
more sexuality
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and getting out into the world more,
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my sexuality has also changed.
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If you're a man or if you're a woman,
if you're trans, if you're not trans--
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You know, those things, I think...
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I've met all kinds of people,
all kinds of ways,
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and they've all been attractive, you know?
[laughs]
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[narrator] Gender is just another type.
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[Lisa Diamond] Some individuals
don't necessarily have
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a gender-based orientation.
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They are more focused on the individual.
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Some individuals
are just more gender-y than others.
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[narrator] In early 19th century Iran,
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people were drawn to characteristics
that were not very gendered at all.
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These young lovers look pretty similar.
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And in recent years,
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that beauty ideal has become popular
in the West,
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with some male and female models
looking pretty similar,
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as ideas of gender have become more fluid.
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There is a lot of evidence that suggests
that men are a bit more rigid
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when it comes to the type of people
that they're attracted to.
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Women show a lot more flexibility.
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[narrator] In one study, a small sample
of gay and straight men and women
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had their genital
sexual response measured
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while they were shown a variety of videos.
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One was a man and a woman having sex.
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Another was men having sex...
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and women having sex...
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and a man masturbating.
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A woman masturbating.
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A buff naked man taking a stroll.
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A toned naked lady exercising.
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And bonobos gettin' it on.
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As you might expect,
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straight men were more turned on
by the videos with women in them.
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And also, as you might expect,
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gay men preferred the videos
featuring men.
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But the women,
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they were turned on
by pretty much everything.
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Lesbians were even slightly more aroused
by the bonobos than the strolling man.
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One of the hallmarks of human sexuality
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is that humans are able to use sexuality
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for purposes other than reproduction.
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It cements social alliances.
It reduces stress.
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And so, flexibility in the sexual system
is a good thing.
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It's a part of the ability of sex
to serve multiple functions.
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[narrator]
And according to the latest research,
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attraction mostly comes down
to four main pillars...
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and they're pretty simple.
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The first one is physical appearance,
obviously.
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But then, the second pillar of attraction
is... geography?
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In the UK, for example,
the majority of relationships
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are formed between people
who live relatively nearby,
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probably between five
and ten kilometers away at most.
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[narrator] And we like people who have
the qualities we value in ourselves.
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Opposites almost never attract.
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People who are too different
or who have different values to us,
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we often find
that they-- they cause discomfort in us.
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[narrator] The fact that you
and your partner
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have compatible star signs
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matters less than the fact
that you both care about star signs.
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Well, you gotta be smart.
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I always like someone who's smart.
Down-to-earth, definitely.
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00:15:11,327 --> 00:15:14,121
Someone who's spiritual.
That's really big for me.
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00:15:14,204 --> 00:15:18,834
Their kindness,
their ability to be present.
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Adventurous, playful, good communicator...
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[narrator]
And finally, we tend to find comfort
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in people who reciprocate our expressions
of intimacy.
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For example, if I--
If I told you something
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about my true self,
who I really, really am,
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are you going to reciprocate?
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Are you going to tell me something
about yourself in return?
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[narrator]
That could be why this experiment
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of asking 36 questions to a stranger
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actually worked for people.
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Sharing your most treasured memories...
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terrible memories...
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and your secret hunches
about how you're going to die
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could get pretty intimate.
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So, it turns out, Cosmo's advice
is surprisingly scientific.
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Focusing on the ways you're similar,
mm-hmm.
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Hanging around them a lot...
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That's geography.
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Loving them...
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That's opening yourself up to reciprocity.
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And eye contact...
Well, that's just really sexy.
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[theme music playing]