 |
| Dr. Helen Fisher, Chief Scientific Advisor for Match.com |
Dr. Helen Fisher, who passed away from cancer in 2024, was a world renowned anthropologist known for her extensive work on love. Beginning with her doctoral research Fisher focused much of her research on understanding how and why people fall in love. She also sought to understand biocultural patterns of love related to the psychology, culture, and biology of love; infidelity and divorce; and much more. Today’s blog post will summarize Fisher’s broad career.
Helen Fisher (and her twin sister) was born in 1945 in New York City. Her father was an executive for Time magazine and her mother a floral designer. From a young age Fisher was encouraged to “be useful as well as ornamental.” This may have led her to study psychology and anthropology at New York University, as well as to the University of Colorado-Boulder, where she earned her Masters and Ph.D. in anthropology. It was during her doctoral research that she began studying the biological anthropological aspects of love and set her on her career trajectory.
After graduating with her doctorate Fisher took on a short-term job as a research editor at Reader’s Digest General Books. She moved on from here to a career in academia. She took up teaching and research positions at Rutgers University in New Jersey, the New School for Social Research, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.
It was also during this time that she published several books. Her first book was published in 1982 and focused on the development of human female sexuality and the root of the nuclear family. She followed this one up nearly a decade later with a book on the cross-cultural study of infidelity and divorce/marriage endings. It was during her research for this book that she refuted the popular claim of the “seven year itch”, the idea that relationships end after seven years. She actually identified that most relationships end at the four year mark. The reason was simple: people could move on and find a better relationship, allowing them additional time to either have their first children or additional children. Four additional books followed suit, including one that she submitted days before her death in August 2024.
In 2004 Fisher’s work caught the attention of the CEOs of Match.com. They recruited her to work for their company to improve their mission: linking people up with their optimal love match. It was here in her capacity as chief scientific advisor where she relied upon her biological anthropological expertise, delved into psychology and neuroscience, and drew on cultural anthropological subject matter to create the Fisher Temperament Inventory, a 62-part questionnaire derived from data collected from six million individuals. This questionnaire was created through the use of brain scan and survey data collected and analyzed by Fisher and her team at Match. The questionnaire continues to be used by Match today, which is part of the reason for its success in the matchmaking business.
While Fisher dedicated her career to studying love she was less lucky in it. Her first marriage in the 1960s lasted four months, but it was in the years before her death that she managed to fall in love and married. Their love story was anything but conventional. Although short lived it was very fulfilling and left them both very happy.
References
Fisher, H. (2024). Helen Fisher, Ph.D. Retrieved from Helen Fisher, Ph.D.: https://helenfisher.com/
Jones, N. (2021, February 10). Is Love a Biological Reality? Retrieved from Sapiens.org: https://www.sapiens.org/biology/biological-anthropology-love/
Telegraph Obituaries. (2024, August 29). Helen Fisher, scientist who scanned the brains of people in love and the brokenhearted. The Telegraph, pp. https://www.yahoo.com/news/helen-fisher-scientist-scanned-brains-150000011.html.
The Times. (2024, September 4). Helen Fisher obituary: popular academic on love, attraction and sexual behaviour. The Times of London.
No comments:
Post a Comment