On SBS Tuesdays 8:30pm

Repeated Wednesday 1:00pm SBS ONE, Friday 7:30pm SBS TWO

The Science of Sexual Attraction

Tuesday, 24 Aug 10

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What causes that spark when we first meet someone?
 
This week Insight is joined by scientists who have been unlocking the secrets of attraction.
 
While it may seem like magic or fate the way we sometimes look across a room and lock eyes with a stranger, there may be very good reasons.
 
Our faces, bodies and even our smells, are signalling information to potential partners.
 
For some us, one look is all it takes to fall in love – or lust.
 
For others it’s all the clues in that  first conversation that sends our brains in overdrive.
 
New Yorkbiological anthropologist Helen Fisher, has been scanning the brains of people in love and there is some serious chemistry going on.

UK psychologist Ian Penton Voak has spent years researching what we find attractive in faces.
 
Dr Barnaby Dixson can tell us what we are drawn to in male and female bodies.
 
And Dr Paul Eastwick has investigating what causes that initial attraction with speed dating experiments in the US.
 
Join Insight as we test these theories of lust, love and attraction with those that are in love, out of love and looking for love.


Meet the Guests

  • Dr Helen Fisher

    Dr Helen Fisher is a Biological Anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site, Chemistry.com and author of ‘Why Him, Why Her?’ She has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love.


  • Dr Barnaby Dixson

    Dr Barnaby Dixson is an Anthropologist who has studied human attractiveness and body shapes in different cultures.

  • Dr Paul Eastwick

    Dr Paul Eastwick is a Social Psychologist who has studied sex differences in initial attraction processes, the theories people hold about their romantic lives, and the importance of attachment in early relationship development. He says that regardless of personality types, people are looking for a mate with similar interests and experiences to their own.

  • Dr Ian Penton Voak

    Dr Ian Penton Voak is a psychologist who specialises in human behaviour at the University of Bristol in the UK. His research explores the science of faces and what makes them attractive. Recently he has been looking at cross-cultural face preferences and the effect of alcohol on attractiveness.

  • John and Surinder Arkan

    Surinder and John had an arranged marriage, and met when she responded to his personal ad in the newspaper. They have been happily married for 14 years and have three children together.

  • Catherine and Steve Manning

    Catherine and Steve have been married for 16 years, and Catherine still finds him attractive, even though she was originally attracted to his long hair, which is now receding and cut short. Her ‘lightning bolt’ moment was dancing to a song by the Cranberries at a party with Steve, when she got that feeling, “like they talk about in movies, and I thought didn’t exist”.

  • Ross and Audrey Power

    Audrey first saw Ross riding his motorcycle, and says she fell in love with him instantly. While it took Ross a little longer to feel the same way, they have been inseparable since meeting in 1948. They have been happily married for 58 years.

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