Neurotransmitter Personality Type
February 4th, 2009 at 10:53 pm (raven)
Helen Fisher rocks. And not just because she is willing to put love, a societal sacred cow, under her anthropologist’s cutting knife, but because she got science into Oprah’s O Magazine.
It’s old news to avid O readers, but new news to me that Fisher wrote an article in 2007 called What’s Your Love Type? for O. While a lot of this article reads like your typical magazine personality test, it strays from the herd by relating each of four personality types to a neurotransmitter. Roughly, it is:
Dopamine - someone with a powerful dopamine system will seek out novelty = adventurer
Estrogen - estrogen allows empathy and emotional intelligence (I wonder if there’s some oxytocin in there, too.) = negotiator
Serotonin - a lot of serotonin makes people even-keeled, loyal, and structured = builder
Testosterone - drive and rationality = director
Admittedly such categorizations are simplistic have limited use for the well-rounded. But, since I like to think about the actions of neurotransmitters on my mood and emotions, I like this chart. I especially like that Fisher found her categories largely matched with those made by psychologists, like the Jungian Myers-Briggs test. Of course, there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, or more of a looking at the quark problem. Are these archetypes ubiquitous because they permeate the mythology of our culture or are they part of our cultural mythologies because they have a biological origin?
But, back to my point: science in O Magazine! Neurotransmitters were mentioned, and I think that counts. Right on, Helen Fisher!
Listen to this interview for a great quote:
Leonard Lopate:
“A scientific approach does take some of the romance out of the question, doesn’t it?”
Helen Fisher:
“Well, not for me. You can know every single chemical in a piece of chocolate cake and still sit down and eat the cake and be thrilled. Ad you can know every single part of an enginine of a Farari and get into the machine and drive it and enjoy the road. So for me it’s added a tramendous depth and breadth and highth to it.”
(Sound like Richard Feynman’s flower quote?)
