The Evolutionary Psychology Of Love - Robin Dunbar

The length of the fingers and particularly the second and the fourth digits are determined during development by the load of testosterone from the mother that the fetus is exposed to. The higher that is, the shorter the index finger is. Shorter index finger means that you are, on the whole, more likely to be promiscuous. (air whooshing)

Do you ever find it annoying to be so well known for one landmark concept, like Dunbar's number?

Um, I have to say, sometimes. But, um, you know, there are only about, I'm told, uh, 10 people who have a number named after them, and I'm the only one that's alive.

No way.

(laughs) Something like that.

Wow. Well, that's i-

Which is a bit worrying.

Oh, well, you think that they're killing off the people that numbers are named after?

Mm, (laughs) who knows?

Yeah, you never, you never do know. So originally I wanted to talk about friendships, but we're gonna do that another time. You have a book that explains, very interestingly, from an evolutionary psychology basis what is happening when we fall in love, what happens when we fall out of love. So it's just, uh, an absolute primer. How do you define love? What is it?

I, well, I, y- I think humans have spent the last umpty thousand years trying to figure out how to define love and the answer is, it is very difficult. Um, it's clear that something weird goes on in the brain and, in fact, the brain goes completely crazy, um, a- and, uh, w- we kind of become fixated, if you like, is what effectively happens on a particular person. Um, and, uh, um, I mean, it's k- it's- it's easy to describe the appearance of somebody in love. I mean, all the great poets and Shakespeare and et cetera, et cetera, kind of do it extremely well, essentially, you know, they, it's sort of dreamy, uh, appearance and- and they can't get the person out of their mind and they want to be near the person, all these kind of things. But trying to understand what is actually going on (laughs) inside the mind really has been a bit of a nightmare. But the reality is, all cultures have or experience, uh, something very similar along these lines. That's not to say that every person in a given culture experiences. Some people are constantly falling in love (laughs) and like, mm, every time a new person comes in the room, they fall in love with them. And other people don't fall in love particularly with anybody. Yeah, they get on fine with them and they maybe have babies with them, but you know, they're not... It's a bit give or take, you know, um, uh, uh, a- as you might say, they'd better not, they'd have that sort of commitment. So I suppose there is a sense in which there's a, uh, a feeling of commitment, of, um, rosy sunglasses, this person is the most wonderful person I've ever met, all these k- kind of cliches. You know, cliches are true, based on observation of fact. (laughs)