"Men will stop at nothing." "I'd rather die than lose I think." "You can't trust women." "Women can get away with everything I think in life, just by smiling." "Men and women can't get along." "I don't feel Craig understands me hardly at all." "Are we different species?" "Five men, five women." "I found it really, really difficult." "Men have no empathy." "The world's biggest sex survey..." "Secret experiments..." "And in a world first, brain changing drugs..." "It's totally changed me life." "Mate?" "How're you doing?" "Prepare to discover what really separate the sexes." "We've invited five women and five men to take part in a series of unique tests." " Good morning." " Morning." "Could you tell me your name please?" "Yes." "Jamie Hannah." "Our test group has been chosen to represent as broad a range of people as possible." "And what is your occupation?" "I'm a housewife." "Ah, investment banker." "Engineer." "I'm a teaching assistant." "And how many sexual partners have you had?" "Um... three." "I can count on both hands." "Hmm, God I can't answer that." "Um, a number less than my wife I think." "The volunteers know they're taking part in a programme about the differences between men and women." "We need to take a saliva sample..." "What they don't know is that by the end of the programme some of them will have totally changed their view of who they really are." "First they need to complete the BBC's online sex survey." "They" be tested on everything from language to love, geometry to greed." "On your laptop computers there are a series of programmes that assess a whole range of traits and abilities." "What we want to see is how the brains of men and women differ." "Professor Richard Lippa and his colleagues designed the survey for us, and since it went online nearly half a million people world-wide have taken part." "This is the single largest gender survey that's ever been conducted." "We've never been able to assess such a variety of people in so many different areas." "What we want to know is how different our men and women are and how they measure up to the nation." "I'd rather die than lose I think." "I'm more interested in engineering than I am in people." "I'm a fighter." "I think that's a masculine quality that I definitely have." "I'm a man in a traditionally female role." "I like to say how I feel." "If that gets me into trouble, so be it." "Well that's me." "He sees me a bit like a Rottweiler or something." "And I always wear something that's quite low cut, quite you know..." "In my job we deal with um, hundred and millions of pounds." "They're just numbers on screen." "They're just zeros." "I wouldn't really say I was a girlie girl at all." "We'll be testing out volunteers whatever they do." "Even the cab they arrived in was rigged with hidden cameras." " Hello." " Alright, how are you doing." "And driven by an actor." "The BBC, eh?" " What a load of bollocks." " Is it?" "What's going on?" "They're doing a science programme, difference between men and women." "The way they think, the way that we think differently, eh?" "Yeah." "As in, men do, women don't." "You know?" " I love documentaries." " Yeah." "There's so much rubbish on telly." "The actor makes sure that all of our passengers hear the same conversation." "Well they were saying that the square mile down here, if it-if it was an independent country it would be the 20th richest in the world." "Yeah." " That's what they were saying." " Amazing." "Well you'd think after 29 years of marriage you'd know someone pretty well, wouldn't you." "You would do, wouldn't you." "Not me." "She's run off with another bloke." "Like obviously not." "Think that's why I'm on the show." "I'd fucking party mass off round the world." "I just can't believe I was that stupid." "But will the men and women remember different bits of what they've heard?" "Will the next person come in please?" "Psychiatrist Doctor Sandra Scott springs a surprise interrogation." "What kind of car did you come here in?" "Er it was a silver Mercedes." "Anything else?" "Er, silver, leather seats, um, GPS system on the dashboard..." "That it?" "I noticed the central locking switch had a chrome handle for opening the door after central locking." "Did you talk to the cab driver?" "Er yeah we talked er about um... the sort of financial centre of er London." "Yeah they were going on about the square mile which is, you-you might have heard of it, just down here?" "It's where all the banks are in London." "Yeah." "They reckon that if it was an independent country it'd be the 20th richest in the world." "Unbelievable." "Yeah." "Can you recall three facts or possibly more of what he told you about the City of London?" "Um... tch... er..." "I can't remember." "He was er, um..." "Er... no." "Do you remember him talking about his marriage?" "Yes I do, yeah." "So that was another topic covered." "It was, yeah..." "Car was automatic by the way." "Sorry?" "The car was automatic, by the way." "Okay." "It had a walnut trim." "So were you actually listening to him?" "I... yes!" "Er um er or connecting but-rather than wishing to store information, so..." "What did interest you?" "Talking about his marriage problems." "He was really quite open which quite surprised me really because men are quite, normally hide their feelings but he was quite forthcoming." "You know he's glad that the kids are older and they've moved out, but it just means that he's alone now really." "And he said, if it had been the other way round, um, she would have found out really early on." "You know, sort of woman's instinct and all that." "How did you catch her out?" "You didn't find her at..." "come home early, did you?" "That'd be awful." "Generally speaking, all of the women had a much be-better memory for the emotional facts." "Men were more thing oriented..." "And women were more people oriented." "Women like relationships, men like facts." "But according to Italian scientists it's not quite so simple." "Okay guys, take a seat." "Make yourself comfortable." "I'm just going to get you to watch a few minutes of TV." "If the Italians are right, you're about to witness something very revealing." "A High Street bank has warned that the number of new buyers has plunged to it's lowest level for 20 years." "The problem of..." "When we asked our viewers what they'd seen and heard we discovered an extraordinary thing." "When 24-hour drinking becomes legal in England and Wales later this year pubs..." "The men remembered some of what our male newsreader had said..." "Licenses had been applied for six from London, none from other places." "If they didn't er curb it within eight weeks they were gonna receive a fine." "Scientists are warning that a recent outbreak of bird..." "But when they were watching his female colleague they appeared to have gone deaf." "The scars outbreak in 2002 She had two stories..." "Er-er... she was quite attractive for a start." "The girl had a pink top with black trim." "That's about all I can remember." "And she had nice breasts." "We found that men are indeed interested in facts, but one thing they're more interested in... is sex." "Which stands to reason." "Men are, after all, much more promiscuous than women..." "Aren't they?" "How many partners have you had sexual intercourse with in the past five years?" "How old were you when you lost your virginity?" "We sent our researchers to find out just how much more promiscuous men really are..." "Our street survey found that on average, men reported 13 sexual partners, while women only managed 7, in line with other sex surveys." "But hold on, who are all the men sleeping with?" "And the survey's about sexual behaviours and attitudes." "The trouble with asking personal questions face to face is that you rarely get honest answers." "How many sexual partners have you had?" "I think... 25 or something like that, 20-25." "I can count on both hands." "You can..." " So 10." " Ten." "Either men are exaggerating or women are being economical with the truth." "To find out what's going on we asked our volunteers to take a lie detector test." "I'm gonna put wire round your stomach, and I'm gonna put one around your chest... then take the reading from one of them." "Try to breathe normally without taking in a deep breath or holding your breath." "Okay." "Try not to nod or shake your head, just say yes and no." "Okay." "I am the owner of a financial and accounting recruitment firm..." "I'm very money driven." "Be Jack I want to have nice holidays, you know," "I want to get my convertible sports car." "And in the next six months they're my goals." "So I'm gonna achieve them." "Gonna make sure it happens." " Well I am about to start the test." " Okay." "What I wanna hear from you is a yes or a no." "Okay." " Is your first name Lucy?" " Yes." "Have you had around 10 sexual partners in your lifetime?" "No." "Have you had more than 10 sexual partners in your lifetime?" "Yes." "I have had more sexual partners than I admitted to." "You know the reasons as to probably why I didn't want to sort of announce it, but yes I have." "Well what are the reasons?" "Well I think the main reasons is-is sort of you know, the reputation side of it um, you know." "I want to attract the... and I think the-the man out there is still old-fashioned in his views and points, um, I think that you know, he still likes a very sort of feminine type of girl who... and the thought of him, er her sorry," "have slept with a lot of men, you know, disgusts him." "When they filled in our anonymous online survey, men and women did admit to having the same numbers of sexual partners." "And what's more, nearly a quarter of both sexes admitted to having been unfaithful to a long-term partner." "We also found that whatever their past experience, men predicted more than twice as many sexual partners in the future than women did." "So even though men are distracted by the idea of sex they aren't more promiscuous than women after all." "It's just that they'd like to be." "So one myth busted." "What about the other stereotypes?" "Women are more emotional." "We're more understanding..." "Friendlier..." "Sensitive..." "Caring..." "But are women really more caring?" "We hired an 8-year old actress, fitted her with a secret camera," "and abandoned her on a London street." "This is what happened next..." "This test is a measure of empathy, the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and to act appropriately." "Hello darling." " You alright, sweetheart?" " Yeah." "You're waiting for someone, pet?" "Yeah my mummy's just gone in Simsbury's." " How long's she been?" " Mm, don't know." "Do you want some company?" "Well I think it was shock to both of us to see a little girl sitting all on her own up against a cement wall." "Yes." "And you just wanted to go in and protect her and..." "Yeah." "And that's... make sure that she was okay." "But it was just commonsense when you see a little girl on her own you don't walk past her." "I saw her twice actually, going down and coming back up..." "I thought she was probably waiting for somebody in the hairdressers actually." "I noticed she actually did have quite a brand new pair of shoes on." "So I thought she doesn't look as if she's in a light amount of trouble." "I'm a man with me own, aren't I." "And if I'm seen talking to little girls like that, what's the reaction?" "Of all the excuses given for doing nothing, concern about being seen as a paedophile seems the most plausible." "But note that none of the men alerted the authorities or asked a women to help on their behalf." "What you doing there, poppet?" "During the hour we filmed, 41 women stopped to help." "Some of them were so concerned that they came back several times." "But only two men stopped." "And one of them was with a woman." " Are you alright, darlin'?" " Yeah..." "Twenty two percent of women offered help as opposed tojust one percent of men." "But this is just one test, and one way of measuring empathy." "Our volunteers are about to try another." "Former para Paddy Doyle runs a boxing gym." "If it wasn't for fitness I'd be... be-be in prison." "You know." "I would be." "Paddy holds 130 world records for fitness and endurance." "He is officially the world's fittest athlete." "I've-I've had to be selfish er while doing my sport." "And it's affected my relationships because women couldn't take that." "It was either the world records or them." "And unfortunately I went for the world records." "Like the others," "Paddy has filled in a detailed psychological questionnaire designed to measure empathy." "Of the half a million people who took part in our online survey, over 90% of the top scorers were women." "Men were very much in second place." "How do you think your husband would do on this?" "How do-what do you think his score..." "Oh this guy, you'd be having a laugh, right at bottom." "Men have no empathy." "No." "Okay." "Well let's to a man to see how he feels about that." "For empathising I got 12 out of 20." "Oh, are we surprised?" "Yes." "Thought it would have been um..." "a bit less." "Yeah." "So that has surprised me." "In the empathy test" "Paddy actually outscored all the other men, and all but two of the women." "Paddy's breaking the mould and shown that some men can be very empathic." "What about you?" "Um, definitely not." "A case, apparently, according to this test." "I got 3 out of 20." "Apparently I've been told I do lack a bit of empathy." "And er I-I have tried using it in a sentence before like saying," "I empathise with you." "But apparently that's not empathy." "Can I suggest you go to Paddy for some lessons?" "I will." "Liz and Craig Watson have a personal interest in empathy." "Everyone looks so happy, don't they." "It seemed very idyllic really." "I rememberjust feeling very comfortable with you." "Then." "Craig is very calculating." "He's very stubborn." "Incredibly stubborn." "Liz is... is the opposite of myself." "Um, she's almost too fiery, too almost out of control at times." "I don't feel Craig understands me hardly at all." "And we've gone out sometimes and Craig's had a book, and he's reading the book when we're out." "You know and that-that... that really upsets me actually." "You see, I haven't done that for several years." "Oh you've done it recently." "Craig is living the life of a bachelor, actually." "And he, you know, he's a great bachelor." "Liz and Craig blame each other for their failure to communicate." "So in an unusual move we've asked neurologist Reuben Gerr to examine their brains." "So um here is er the scanner, and er what we will get is an image of your brain anatomy, but more importantly we'll get images of what parts of the brain become active when you have to solve specific kinds of problems." "A key part of empathy is recognising how other people feel." "We'll start doing the tests, and the first test is the test er of emotion recognition." "And you have to answer whether the face er looks to you like a positive or a negative emotion." "To me communication is mostly about the non-verbal, not what you actually say but what you're feeling." "And I think Craig's not that in touch with his feelings enough." "Actually maybe I've got perhaps more sensitivity in that area than I'm given credit for, and-and vice versa that Lizzie hasn't got quite as much strength in that area that she gives herself credit for." "Well that's interesting." "I just learned something else." "If the scan reveals that Liz and Craig read other people's emotion differently then some of their misunderstandings might be instantly explained." "The part of the brain that deals with emotions is right in the centre of the brain, right here." "Liz shows er a hefty activation, whereas Craig's brain shows no activation at all in this emotional part of the brain..." "I'm not locking on." "...whereas you went straight to the emotional part and you say, how would I have felt if I were looking like that." "You-you-you immediately invoke the... the-the emotional part of your brain." "Liz is 40%% % more accurate than Craig at reading emotion in others because she is using the emotional part of her own brain." "And the scans reveal that in this test" "Craig shows no emotional response at all." "Liz, are you surprised at Craig's result?" "What surprised me most was the fact that it was completely devoid of any emotional response in the centre part of the brain." "I mean that actually has given me a big insight into why um I've often felt I wish he would show some emotion..." "Yeah but-but also switching back, in terms of our relationship and in terms ofjust our understanding," "I sometimes need things to be spelt out more." "Yeah." "Yeah that-just don't think I'm going to take it on telepathically or sojust, you've actually got to tell me." "And also I mean in situations where there's plenty of conflict and so on," "I'm trying to calm things down actually." "I guess I just want to avoid conflict, whereas you're more able to..." "or more willing to fort of embrace..." "Yeah." "Well I just think it's-it's a much more interesting level to operate on if you can get into your emotional response a bit more." "If women assume that men are just like them, and vice versa, that's when you get into difficulties." "As far as you're concerned you're sending out all these signals." "It's entirely obvious that you are upset, so then when the bloke doesn't respond you up the anti some more because you're determined to get an emotional response, you introduce emotive s-you know, emotive topics so he has to respond," "he can't ignore it." "And then what do you do?" "You end up having a ding-dong." "It's a shame for it to have to degenerate into a row... just in order to activate the emotional response..." "The only real way forward is to realise we are different, we process this sort of information differently, and how are we gonna make that work." "Until recently scientists were reluctant to acknowledge any sex differences." "Partly because of history." "In 1879 Gustav LeBon, the founding father of psychology announced that intelligent women are so rare that they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as for example, a gorilla with two heads." "Consequently we men neglect them entirely." "And that, 125 years ago, was medical fact." "If I bring out a male brain and put it next to a female brain you can see er there's very little differences in any of the structures on the surface of the brain." "The only difference really between these two is their size." "And, ah, in general female brains are a little bit smaller." "So the er explanation for this is that men tend to be bigger." "And so this is in proportion to that difference in body size." "I don't think anyone's going to suggest that a small man is any less intelligent than a large man." "Having said that, there have been a number of er studies to suggest that certain areas of the brain might be slightly different in size." "And the biggest areas of difference appear to be in language processing, and also in this part of the frontal lobe which is important in visio-spacial processing." "And this might be the basis for some of the er functional differences we see between men and women." "Ah, they may just be wired up differently." "Dub." "In this test" "Tim is listening to made-up words." "Bok." "Different sounds are played to each ear at the same time..." "Bub." "...but Tim only hears one of them." "Gab." "When Clare listens to the same test, this is what she hears..." "Gab and gat." "Because women use both sides of the brain to process speech" "Clare can hear both sounds." "Tod and top." "Dot." "But Tim, who as a man, only uses the right side of his brain..." "Get." "...can only hear one." "Bok." "I found it really, really difficult." "It-it almost came over as one word in both ears at the same time." "Things aren't looking very good for men." "Yeah it was automatic by the way." "Object-centred, partially deaf, unempathic, sex-obsessed fantasists is not how most of them would like to be remembered." "Men are supposed to be go-getting, thrusting, successful." "So we're giving them a chance to shine." "After all, men love competition and they're great at driving." "Aren't they?" "I want women to win." "Badly." "I'm gonna really try and win this." "I'm in!" "I almost feel it in the pit of me stomach... that I just wanna be better than everybody else." "The hormone testosterone plays an important part in competitiveness." "Testosterone, the so-called male hormone, is actually produced by both men and women." "We're analysing our volunteers' hormone levels throughout the competition to see how their testosterone responds." "It seems that men, um, the kind of biological response to competition is very different than that in women." "In the men we see large fluctuations which is consistent with what one expects in response to competition, but we see virtually zero fluctuation in the women." "Men are more likely, um, as a result of this increase in testosterone to take risks, and risks might end in encounter and competitive encounter may be beneficial." "The testosterone powered men quickly take the lead." "Lucy in cart 6, the woman who wanted to win, is languishing in 7th place." "But right at the very front is Lloyd hotly pursued by Jamie driving cart number 8." "Ah there's an individual who's very much worth, ah, pointing out to you, and that is number 2." "Ah if we look at his T-levels um and compare them with his pre-race levels, there's a substantial increase." "He's ah likely to be a very competitive, highly... highly strung individual who takes it very seriously." "I'm more interested in engineering than in people." "If it-if it came a choice between separating me from me lathe, and separating me from Oliver," "I would let go of the lathe." "But I wouldn't give it up easily." "Want me to go first?" "I can't just secretly let him win like his mum can." "I just don't feel it's honest." "Right are you ready?" "Ready for this?" "No." "Jump, jump." "To be honest I don't really feel bad that he's crying." "To me he's just displaying what I would feel if I lost and want to be doing the same thing really." " How old is he?" " Six." "I'm not a monster." "But monstrous things are happening to Lloyd." "Jamie's taken the lead and he's not showing any signs of giving it back." "But as Lloyd tries to regain the lead his testosterone sky-rockets and things go from bad to worse." "Yet more testosterone, and more stupid risks." "Lloyd's race position is in free-fall." "As Jamie strolls past the chequered flag," "Lloyd's world has disintegrated." "The former race leader finishes fifth." "But I have an extraordinary finding here where number 2's testosterone levels decline rapidly to nearly that of his pre-race levels which suggests to me that something unusual has happened, that something has, something's gone wrong here" "and I suspect he's not very happy about it." "I feel absolutely enraged." "Not with anybody else but with myself." "Five minutes ago, when you were up there," "I could have got out, smashed something, hit somebody." "That's how I felt." "I wouldn't have done, because you know you can't do that in public but..." "I feel good." "But I mean I wanted..." "I-I did actually aim to win." "I wasn't going in the... well, I wanted to have a good time but I wanted to win as well." "Jamie's testosterone levels during the race revealed the secret of his success." "While Lloyd's levels went through the roof" "Jamie's were much more subtle, allowing him to become more competitive and take informed risks." "His modest rises were useful where Lloyd's were catastrophic." "But if we look at the women, there's no rise in testosterone levels at all." "There's no doubt that women can be competitive but they don't have the edge that testosterone can give men." "I am a very competitive person and I was trying to do my best." "Um, I think I just, you know, break... and then when I see somebody in front of me, instead of trying to swerve round them I hesitate." "The men's' rise in testosterone turbo-charges their competitive instinct, though it can be a very mixed blessing." "It's not by chance that women are less prone to road-rage." "Testosterone is an incredibly powerful hormone." "It affects us all - men and women." "And it affects us well before we're even born." "For the first few weeks of development it's impossible to tell if the tiny embryo floating in its amniotic fluid is a boy or a girl." "They all appear to be female." "But in week 8 the males start to produce testosterone in huge quantities, and their bodies change." "And it's recently been discovered that from the very start they seem to behave differently as well." "At just a few hours old girls prefer to look at a human face while boys will look at, well, anything really." "Barely born, and yet girls like people." "And boys like things." "Professor Simon Baron-Cohen had a hunch that the differences in behaviour were down to testosterone." "He just needed proof." "I was very surprised to discover that hospitals routinely store the amniotic fluid after they carry out an amniocentesis..." "This was the opportunity that we were looking for." "Here was the fluid that if you like allowed us to go back in time to make any link between the hormone levels in the womb and the child's current behaviour." "Well finding the amniocentesis test was tremendously exciting because never before were you able to measure testosterone levels produced by the child and look at later behaviour in relation to that." "Oh look at that there." "Why do you think the big triangle's pushing the little one?" "Don't know." "You don't know?" "Well all the cartoons are designed to make people think about the two triangles as people." "And what we want to look at is whether there is any difference between the one with high testosterone and low testosterone... very boring" "The kids with high testosterone are more likely to behave in a masculine way than the kids with low testosterone." "The mummy and a baby, and the mummy's pushing the baby out, so she could watch telly, missed baby too noisy." "Yeah?" "That's great..." "If the big triangle was a person, what kind of person would it be?" " A triangle person." " A triangle person." "What about the little triangle?" "What kind of person would they be?" "Yeah but they're not, 'cos they haven't got any legs." "And we've been able to show that the testosterone levels, week 16 of your life, are related to the eye contact you make, the social relationships that you have, the interests you have, how fast you learn to talk." "All these things that could be very, very important in the long term, for who you are." "Most of us will never have the opportunity to have our amniotic fluid analysed." "But there is a scientist whose controversial theory could mean that we can all tell how much testosterone we've been exposed to in the womb right now." "Our fingers have information about how much testosterone and how much oestrogen we've been exposed to in the womb." "So the longer one's ring finger relative to one's index finger, the more testosterone you've had." "And that testosterone has an effect on the brain, and on the body." "If a boy has a large amount of testosterone before birth he's likely to be born with a very efficient heart and vascular system." "So the longer one's ring finger relative to one's index finger, the faster one can run." "These athletes are five thousand meter specialists." "Professor Manning has never met them, or seen them race." "But if his theory is correct he'll be able to tell us all about them." "What I should be able to do is look at the differences between the ring finger and the index finger, and on that basis rank these runners first, second, third, fourth and so on." "In theory that should work." "In practice, we're providing Professor Manning with photocopies of the athletes' hands and in return he's risking his reputation by providing us with the results of a race that has yet to be run." "I'm-I'm looking at a kind of living fossil in the fingers, something which tells us about an event a long time ago in the development of this particular individual." "Each of these cards has got a number on." "The numbers are obscured so don't take the front off, er and the number is my prediction as to where you're going to end up at the end of the race." "On your marks..." "There are other variables that I ha-just have no knowledge of whatsoever." "How many times do these runners train, for example." "Er are they feeling okay today." "Have they had a row with their girlfriend." "You know, I don't know these men, and all I've seen are their hands." "You know I'm quite nervous about this." "Um, I hope I'm right and er," "I'm willing to give it a go." "In most people the difference between ring and index fingers is small." "But the ring finger of one of our runners is a whopping six millimetres longer than his index finger, and Professor Manning is certain that he's found his winner." "That was absolutely magnificent." "What I'd like you to do is to line up in your finishing order, and we'll work down line and I'll rip your numbers off." "Starting with Russell..." "Oh my god." "That is amazing." "Pot luck so far." "No way!" "Six." "We got four out of six right but er the two that were wrong were kinda quite close." "Yeah I thought that the finger thing was bollocks because there's so many variables." "I'm very impressed." "Professor Manning has agreed to do one further, more radical test... to see if finger length can be used to determine our volunteers' brain sex - how male or female their brains are." "If I arrange you along this line in terms of the amount of testosterone you've had before birth, that has no implications for sexuality, but is has some implications about your very, very early brain organisation." "Our fingers may provide a record of testosterone in the womb because the genes that trigger its production also determine finger growth." "In general the men and women performed to type." "The men are at the male end and the women are at the female end." "Liz and Craig are at opposite ends." "But there's one exception." "Grace's fingers put her well into the male domain." "In our survey of half a million people, the biggest difference between men and women was in visuo-spacial tasks." "On average men scored 40%% % higher than women." "But some women did outstandingly well and Professor Manning thinks that's partly down to testosterone." "If Professor Manning is right" "Grace should do rather well at our very own visuo-spacial task." " Hi everybody." " Hi." " Morning Tony." " Good morning." "I'm here today to teach you on the cut 432 backhoe loader." "Operating a digger requires a lot of hand-eye co-ordination." "And visuo-spacial skills." "Okay?" "As if you're holding a fine lady." "And according to our survey most women aren't that great at visuo-spacial skills." "Put the bucket flat." "Right, the bucket's..." "which one's the bucket?" "Don't, don't dig it in though." "Right." "Ooh." "You've just got to be gentle." "So you will win because we're gentle." "These lot are like..." "That's brilliant." "All our volunteers have to do is copy Tony." "Oh you've gotta be kidding me." "And try not to break too many eggs." "According to Professor Manning..." "Grace is the only woman who'll be any good at this." "Good luck." "Oh shit." "Oh no!" "As expected, the women were comprehensively outclassed by the men." "I've broken my bucket." "But there was one exception." "Grace was joint winner with Lloyd, scoring three times higher than the rest of the women." "I think most of the... the girls, the other four girls are living up to the social expectations of being woman-like, whereas Grace hasn't fallen into that trap." "I'm a flight test engineer on the eurofire to typhoo." "I assess the aircraft systems whilest it's being flown by one of our test pilots." "I wouldn't really say I was a girlie-girl at all." "I've always found boys' toys far more interesting than girls'." "You might think that Grace has simply acquired 3-D skills by becoming an engineer but her fingers tell a different story." "Even before she was born, testosterone gave Grace an all-male brain with better visuo-spacial skills." "Testosterone is an incredibly powerful hormone that affects us all, men and women." " A triangle person." " A triangle person." "It shapes our bodies... and affects our minds... and it even seems to be at the heart of why on average women are better at language and emotional skills while men are better at visuo-spacial skills." "But of course it's not quite that simple." "Averages conceal individual differences." "We've got nine months in the womb to consider and testosterone is not produced in the same amounts throughout those nine months." "So that it's possible to have a kind of mosaic brain." "Different levels of testosterone at different times in development might explain apparently contradictory brain skills in the same person." "So although Paddy's verbal skills put him firmly in the male camp, he was as sensitive as most women when it came to some tests of empathy." "Previously, um, I perceived it as a weakness but as the days have gone by and going through all the tests," "I'm quite happy that I've got another side to me." "But I was also happy that most of the times" "I was standing on the 100 m..." "100%% % male brain size." "Time for one last test." "This task is gonna be about changing nappies." "And each one of you lucky ladies is gonna have to be with this, well crying baby." "On the face of it, simply a question of who's best at child care." "But in fact it has a deeper purpose." "You're a good boy for Auntie Lulu weren't you, 'cos you didn't do any, any, any naughtiness for Lulu." "As we might expect, most of the women do the task well..." "There you go you right mate?" "Howya doing?" "While most of the men... struggle." "Let's see how this thing works." "Okay." "Oh I got that wrong already." "Try again." "Okay mate." "This will be interesting." "And you might expect testosterone fuelled ultra-male-brained Lloyd to struggle more than most." "I don't think I did a... a particularly good job of connecting with the child." "But there was a task to do, wasn't there, and I just had to get on with it and do it." "You know I could be changing a tyre on a car." "It's a little bit to one side." "Even me own son," "I found it quite alien to connect with him." "I only made a connection grew older and the connection got stronger and stronger." "Wasn't instinctive, immediate bond." "It was something that grew very, very gradually with my son..." "I don't connect too easily with people." "That's actually making me quite emotional." "I actually wanna cry." "If you like, there's something missing..." "Many men find making emotional connections difficult." "Once the women had changed the nappy they picked the baby up." "In stark contrast, most of the men simply stepped away." "Do you want me to return her?" "Or..." "Everything's fine?" "Nappy-changed, baby spoken to, task done." "Good boy." "Are you going to be a footballer?" "Yet despite Lloyd's fear that he doesn't readily connect, when it came to the end of the baby test he surprised everyone." "Ooooh!" "There's a real, a real connection there." "Yeah." "He's enjoying that." "Feels, it looks natural to him, it feels natural." "I could kiss you." "I ooooh, I see, we're talking now aren't we." "Eh?" "Lloyd is aware that he's not naturally empathic." "So he's made more of an effort, working his brain harder." "The result is that his behaviour is indistinguishable from the women's." "Ooooh yes." "Look." "I feel really quite emotional watching that." "That's lovely..." "It's almost like he does all these empathic things but in his mind these things don't add er add-add up to empathy for some reason." "I'm not quite sure what ha..." "I'm not quite sure how he would describe these things." "The sex of our brain is not as clear cut as the sex of our body." "I'm much more feminine than I realised." "While women tend to have female brain sex, and men usually have male brain sex, as individuals we are a mosaic, a unique mixture of both." "As a child-minder looking after kids," "I'd have hoped my empathy score would be a bit better." "Though I have got a hard exterior but it's nice I've got a soft interior." "I can learn a lot from Paddy." "Er P-er and Paddy has-has learned me a lot already." "They're saying that guys have these skills and girls have these, but I think you'd be more successful if you were a guy who had all these female skills." "Do you." "'Cos then you'd have something different to offer." "I've perhaps assumed I had more of a male brain than a female brain but there are things that I have got quite a lot of my female aspects as well and then totally become a better person for it." "And knowing about our brain-sex and where our strengths and weaknesses lie has to mean a better understanding of ourselves and each other." "I-I think it's a two-way street and actually that we both actually have to take a little bit more time and effort to understand where the other person is coming from." "Yeah..." "In a bar in London twenty men are about to meet twenty women." "It's a speed date." "And sparks of attraction are soon flying." "But this is no ordinary encounter." "He likes her right but it's not reciprocated at all is it?" "These men and women are taking part in a scientific experiment." "They've all been measured." "Their preferences have been explored." "I'm very pleased with that man." "And their deepest desires revealed." "You're happy with that." "Yeah." "I'm in love with that." "That's perfect." "Now scientists will try to find them a perfect match." "Match failed." "And their predictions will be put to the test." "She's smiling warmly and uh winding him down at the same time." "Uh let that be a lesson to all of us." "But in the game of love nothing ever goes according to plan." "It was a disaster." "It was a bad gig." "I liked him." "I got him." "There are over four million single women in Britain." "And Beth Egland is one of them." "Now she's about to try a new way of finding love." "Good morning Beth." "How is you?" " Fine." "Hello." " Come in." "In collaboration with an international team of scientists we've created a unique matchmaking agency." "We've recruited over one hundred single men and women tojoin it." "For all of these people conventional dating has failed." "Now they've agreed to put their love lives in the hands of scientists." "By meeting loads and loads of false women." "loads of women who are selfish." "I tend to meet men that kind of like sap me of my strength as I tell them what to do." "Um unbelievably petty considering the amount of choice I get which isn't a lot." "The men that I've tended to attract in the past have been pretty much unreliable." "For the scientists these lovelorn people are guinea pigs." "They present a rare opportunity to test different theories about the nature of attraction and compatibility." "Uh this is Beth." "Um I'm going to leave you together." "Um he's going to be taking some little measurements." "Good luck I'll see you later." "OK bye." "Bye" "OK I will take a facial photograph of you for." "One theory held by zoologist Karl Grammer is that facial similarity is the key to a successful match." "Facial similarity to a male might be a particular form relationships are built." "So how." "It has to be similar or." "They have to be similar." "Right OK." "Wow interesting." "I am looking for Keanu Reeves but I'm probably not going to be able to get him so someone who looks exactly like him." "Somebody who's uh really outgoing - blonde." "Busty and beautiful." "My ideal man is someone with an Oxford education and an SW7 postcode." "Glen Wilson is a psychologist who's CQ test can tell if a couple will be compatible before they've met." "How important to you is sexual explicitness?" "It's certainly very important." "And total fidelity." "I think the odd lapse is forgivable." "This one is reciprocated and uh both in CQ and facial similarity." "Chances are that would be uh an ideal match." "If the scientists succeed it will herald a revolution in dating." "And no one would welcome this more than Beth Egland." "Perfect partner." "Honest." "Busty." "Younger and intelligent." "Beth is a successful career woman." "She's been single for over a year and is finding it increasingly hard to meet men." "I'm knocking on." "You know almost thirty-three." "If I ever want to think about having children then I have to think about it now." "It's just one big vicious circle of going out with." "You know." "Pathetic losers most of the time." "To increase her options Beth has volunteered to see if the scientists can make her more attractive before she's introduced to anyone." "By analysing the geometry of beautiful faces a plastic surgeon has developed a special mask." "This transparency represents a template of perfection." "And although Beth's face falls short a makeup artist can use it to pinpoint the features which need the most help." "So you can see on here." "Your mouth is good and we can just even out the top line so that it's a bit more even." "And the only thing that I think is quite obvious from." "From." "From this is." "Is." "And is the position of your eyes." "So what I'm going to do is use toner and highlighter to create the illusion that they're a little bit further apart." "The beauty mask is usually used to inform the decisions made by cosmetic surgeons." "But it can also be used in this simple and more cost-effective way." "Turn the mirror over." "Yeah." "It's uh." "It's nice because it's still." "I still." "It still looks like me but I can see exactly what you've done." "I think men are going to stop me on the street." "No I look lovely." " Cool." "Excellent." " Thank you." "Can scientific insights also be used to make men more attractive to women?" "OK." "Peter Kerr has volunteered to find out." "Well today we're going to be talking about Thatcher." "So that'll get us started." "But Peter is a thirty-seven year old politics lecturer." "Monetarism." "That's good." "How does that work?" "Married in his twenties he's now divorced." "Hey that's good." "And has been single for two years." "What do you think women think of you?" "Uh the." "The most repeated thing the women say about me is that I'm a really nice guy." "But actually that's fatal when women say that." "How do you rate yourself physically?" "Physically I'm short." "Skinny." "Minging um." "What's minging?" "What's minging that'd be the technical word for um not very good looking." "Peter thinks it's his physical appearance that's the problem." "But what can you do to improve it." "Can I borrow you for a moment?" "Thank you." "I just want to get an impression of this guy here." "This is Peter OK." "Before he's introduced to anyone the scientists are going to identify precisely what is turning women off." "What I need from you is your immediate impressions." "OK." "So what age do you think he is?" " Forty." " Forty." "Um what do you think he does?" "If you just met him in the street what would you say he did?" "Um I don't know maybe he works in a shop." "And if the scale of one to ten of attractiveness." "If ten is really sexy and zero is rather no." " Me personally." " Yes." " Um zero." " Zero right." "Peter can't hear what the women are saying." "Until the results are played back to him." " Um what age?" " Um maybe um forty-six." " Forty-six." " Oh my god." "And what sort ofjob do you think he does?" "Probably a window cleaner." "On the scale of zero to ten." "Where ten is really." "Really sexy." "Where would you put him?" "Um minus one." "Minus one." " Would you go on a date with him?" " No." "Uh would you go on a date with him?" "I've got a boyfriend so no but if I didn't um no." "Sorry." "What's emerged from the experiment is that Peter is perceived to have a low status job and income." "Where most scientific studies suggest women are attracted to men who can provide resources." "The next day a fashion stylist gives Peter a more affluent look." "Good luck." "Confident." "Very anxious." "Um that was a terrifying experience." "So I'm not sure what to expect." "Right was it more terrifying than yesterday?" "Much more terrifying because I knew this time what was coming and yesterday's feedback was so negative" "I was terrified this morning that that was going to happen again." "In spite of the scientific research many women claim that money isn't one of their priorities." "I am looking for somebody who's not too bothered by his um status in society." "Not money-drive." "Not uh dri." "More of a tree hugger than a Porsche driver." "Someone that's not into cars." "Expensive cars." "Football or money." "So will Peter's new look actually make any difference." "What do you think he does for work?" " Businessman." " Businessman." " Management or something." " Oh that's better." " Authoritative." " Professional." "OK." "How much do you think he earns?" " Oh I think he's earning quite a lot - uh quite a bit." " Have a guess." " Forty thousand plus." "And on a scale of nought to ten how attractive do you think he is?" " Be honest." " Four." "Four you'll give him a four OK." " Not bad." " That's five up on yesterday." "What do you like about him." "You gave him a six which is a pretty good score." "What." "What's?" "The overall package is good." "Oh I like that one - package." "Quite sexy looking." "Sexy looking good." "Would you." "Would you go on a date with him if he asked you to go out?" "I think maybe yeah." "Would you consider it?" "Depends where he was going to take me." "Right oh yeah." "Good answer." "Fabulous." " That's a huge." "Huge difference from yesterday." " Yeah." "Now I've um quantified some of the numbers here and it's very." "Very interesting." "In terms of yourjob they um upgraded you considerably." "Um and that's reflect also in your income." "Yesterday the figure that most people tended to come up with was thirty thousand." "Today it was forty thousand." "Um so you have gone up by ten thousand." "And a big difference was how attractive they found you." "Your average score yesterday was." "In fact." "Three point four." "Uh today you have gone up to five point eight." "Well done." "A simple insight into female psychology has made all the difference." "Now it's Beth's turn to learn how to manipulate male perceptions." "Ah Beth hello." "My name's Adrian Fenn and I'm a psychologist." "And this is Goff he's a professional stylist." "Have a seat please." "One of my interests is in the science of female attractiveness and it's something that a lot of male psychologists are interested in." "And what we're going to do today is to try and understand how the science as it's been done." "Informs us about how you can dress differently to make yourself more attractive to men." "The scientists have taken Beth's vital statistics but which aspects of the female figure are actually the most important to men?" "What shall we work on first?" " Well um the breasts I think." " On the breasts." "OK fine." "Is it the breasts?" " Uh you have a look at those." " Yeah definitely." "The legs." "Uh that's." "That's - that's yeah." "Or the bottom." "Yeah I've a feeling I like that." "To find out the dating agency has conducted a groundbreaking new study into what men find physically attractive." "This software allows the men to manipulate female bodies in any way they like." "We can increase those to a sort of size to a sort of a size you'd." "You'd be happier with." " Yeah that's brilliant." " Full cup." "Yeah." " Right you're happy with that." " Yeah very." "With dials to control independently every single body part each man can create his ideal woman." " Oh." "Oh no." "No." " Like." "Like to put a bit of weight on." "Now do you like a woman with quite a bit bottom." "And give her the." "Give her the J Lo bottom." "Let's try that." "Oh no." "No." "Oh my good." "Oh no that's." "No." "No." "No." "No." "NO I don't like that   somewhere in the middle maybe." " OK." " Yeah." "All there James." " OK." "This is the first research of its kind and it's about to provide a unique insight into what men really want." "I'm in love with that." "That's perfect." "Well let's look at the studies." "I haven't seen this   it'll be of interest to me as well." " OK." "Let's have a look at them." "Hah." "Right OK." "Look at the difference between those last two." "An amazing difference in the breast size and the waist." "See how the stomach is changing and the breasts are changing." "Gosh." "Well that's just ridiculous." "That'." "That's Jordan isn't it." " That's anatomically unusual." " Absolutely." "Professor Fernham now averages out the differences to create the optimally attractive woman." "Wait with bated breath." "It is exciting isn't it." "There she is." "Ah now what we see from our sample is that they like relatively large breasts." "What size do you think she would be?" "Um I don't know - uh Goff probably would." "She." "I would." "I would say she's definitely a thirty-two on her back and she's." "I think we're looking at a C to a D cup." "And what we know is that the average woman." "I think in this country is a thirty-six B." "But what's most striking is the hourglass figure." "The equivalent of thirty-six inch hips and a twenty-three inch waist." "Essentially hip to waist ratio is one of the best ways of seeing whether a woman is fertile." "It is easier to make babies with somebody with a lower hip to waist ratio and men appear to know this." "They appear to find fertile women attractive." "Men like curvy women." "I mean that's what's showing there I think." "So how does Beth measure up and what can the fashion stylist do to help her?" "To find out Professor Fernham morphs the ideal woman to Beth's measurements." "What you can see quite clearly there is changes in the bust but very little change in the waist hip ratio which is not that different from yours and that's good news." "Oh yeah." "Using these insights Goff dresses Beth to manipulate subtly the perception of her figure." "OK right then boys are you ready?" "We are." "Good to see." "Right OK Beth do you want to come on out my darling." "Here we are." "Right then what this does optically when you look at the dress is this." "A simple necklace it's got quite a lot going on just there." "What we do is when we look at Beth we gain eye contact then that's just below so the first thing we want to look at is her chest area." "The belt is meant to accentuate the waist to hip ratio." "Yes." "If we didn't have this belt area here." "This - which brought in the waist." "I'm going to let go and you should just see dramatically what happens - so the one thing that the guys wanted when we saw the reports was that small waist." "Exactly." "Gone." "So simply by just putting on just a stretch of material its amazing isn't it." "That looks to me as if you've got very much nearer to he perfect ideal which is." "Of course." "So much more attractive." "The makeovers appear to have worked." "Meanwhile a vast amount of data has be processed." "And the scientists are preparing for the next phase of the experiment." "To predict mutual attraction." "We are looking at a number of variables and the way that they combine." "There is uh physical attractiveness." "There is similarity to one's self and the CQ that covers uh a vast array of personality." "Social attitudes and uh personal preferences." "What type of relationship would you prefer?" "CQ stands for compatibility quotient." "The test has been developed using happily married couples." "And predicts how well a couple are likely to get on in the long term." "Rather ambitious task we have here but we would suppose that if a person showed compatibility in all of these areas then uh the future would be quite rosy." "The predictions will be tested at a speed date." "The scientists have selected twenty men to meet twenty women at an event which will generate four hundred encounters." "None of these people has any idea who the scientists have matched them with." "But they have very clear ideas about what they want." "The woman who I'm looking for is someone who likes to do the household chores." "Cooking." "Cleaning and whatever." "Rich so she can support my huh expensive lifestyle." "Oh and she must be interested in sex." "Or she must like sex." "I'm looking for somebody who's not necessarily handsome but is more striking looking." "They don't necessarily have to be mega-Ioaded." "I'm not worried about that." "I'm not materialistic although obviously I don't." "I want them to have." "You know have a decent lifestyle." "I think somebody like Richard Branson - he has all those qualities." "As the only woman to have received scientific beautify advice" "Beth is in a bullish mood." "If he was hot as I do." "Who knows what could happen." "There might be a marriage proposal by the end." "You don't know." "But will the makeover give her an edge on the competition?" "Exciting." " Looking forward to it." " A date." "Yeah." "Me too." "I'm going to bag a man tonight." "Peter is feeling altogether more apprehensive." "I saw some of the other guys for the speed dating event when they turned up at the measuring day." "They all looked younger than me." "They all looked much better looking than me and much smoother so I think I've got absolutely no chance today." "Um I think I'm competing with some." "Some quality opposition." "But we'll see." "Nice to meet you." "The competition will be even stiffer than he thinks." "Among the bachelors are three men who specialise in the art of picking up women." "They've formed a society to pass on this know-how to other men." "Never un." "Underestimate the power of the ugly girl." "Never." "Emir is a former city broker." "We have real men you know that - so you know you can have the winger commander that is going for the main target and you have the." "The wing man that is going for whatever." "You knowjust taking care of everybody else." "Then we have this." "The kamikaze fighter that is going for the married girl - the." "The big ugly guy." "The boyfriend or something you know." "And is going to crash and burn he knows that." "You know he." "He things you know." "These men have been entered into the experiment as a wildcard." "Will their techniques give them any advantage?" "As in a conventional speed date the men and women meet each other for three minutes." "The first thirty seconds starts now." "But there is a twist to the proceedings." "Each table has been fitted with a gadget which enables the participants to register their positive or negative feelings by turning a dial." "Before the date begins the men and women have been instructed to sit in silence." "And rate each other from nought to a hundred." "Karol Grammer thinks that facial similarity will be decisive." "People are attracted to other people who look like themselves." "OK that's it." "If you have a partner who is like yourself." "You're probably not getting into trouble with him so often because you will have the same ideas." "You share the same values." "The same attitudes and so on and it looks like that people hope that somebody that looks like themselves also shares the same attitudes." "Values and so on." "Dr Grammer illustrates this principle with some well known couples." "Arnold Schwartzenegger." "And uh his wife." "Two very square faces." "Almost identical structure - high cheek bones." "These two have the same chin." "Very round faces." "With an almost identical nose." "This is the same." "Very identical mouth." "They also have uh comparable nose." "And uh the eyes are almost of the same form and colour even." "The zoologists believes that there are genetic benefits to inbreeding and that the men and women with similar faces will find each other the most attractive." "Using special software he has created a facial similarity index for everyone in the agency." "Match found." "Match found." "So will Grant be attracted to Leanne?" "Match found." "Gail to Simon." "And what about Beth?" "Match found." "It turns out that several men have similar faces to her." "So Karl Grammer has joined forces with Glen Wilson to identify her best match." "OK Karl shall we look at the faces that are most similar to Beth and I will lay out the faces that have the highest CQ scores." "Dr Wilson's compatibility test has identified the men with whom she has the best chance of success." "So is this our problems or theirs?" "Beth is a property manager who likes to be in control." "Oh OK well can you arrange for that then?" "OK." "Right let's go and have a look inside." "OK." "In her previous relationships she has usually been the dominant partner." "I'm independent and I'm a strong character." "And men think that they want that - and they think that's great about me and that's great when we're dating." "You know they think that's great but after three months down the line or whatever when it's a serious relationship they realise that I'm not the kind of person they do want." "They want someone who's going to stay at home and not have the strong opinions that they." "They were attracted to in the first place." "And that's my personal difficulty." "But uh and I find that with all men and always have done." "But the scientists have identified four man who match Beth facially and psychologically." "How about that." "That's pretty good hit rate considering we started with fifty people." "As far as age and height are concerned um it's ideal if the male is uh is about five inches taller than the female which is about the average height difference and it's also fairly ideal if." "If he is perhaps uh four or five years older than she is." "We see that on height three of them are taller so that uh this one goes out." "And uh in terms of age they're all actually younger." "The nearest is uh." " This one." " This one." "And his CQ is the highest of them all so if the chemistry was right they would get on extremely well together." "By now Beth has registered first impressions of eight men and she's not easily impressed." "At last she meets Dave." "Both of them." "Of course." "Are completely unaware of the scientists prediction." "A lot of flirtatious signalling going on there." "Well the knob has gone up a little bit there so she obviously likes the look of him." "And uh what's he going to do?" "Yeah looks as though uh he's initially attracted to her as well." "Yes it's an immediate reaction I think." "The same procedure has been used to identify Peter Kerr's best match." "Number two." " That's a hit is it?" " Yes." "Yeah." "Like Beth" "Peter has no idea he is facing his one scientific match." "She's a good actress." "She's smiling warmly and uh winding him down at the same time." "Uh let that be a lesson to all of us." "This result is typical of the first impressions." "She's flat-lining on him." "But there's still everything to play for as the speed date proper now begins." "The men and women meet for exactly three minutes." "After which the men move onto the next table." "Afterwards these forms will be handed in and the participants find out if any of their offers have been reciprocated." "It's a hit and miss approach to finding love." "But sparks of attraction are soon flying." " So what's your name?" " AJ." "Simon." "Hello Simon nice to meet you." " So." " Sorry." "Uh tell me about yourself." "Beth was given high scores on first impressions." "But in the three minute conversations she takes a very business-like approach." "Why are you single?" "Why am I single?" "Yeah." "And even so you can ask one." "Fire in the question." "So why are you here." "Why are you here?" "Well I'm over thirty and I'm single" " and so my biological clock is ticking." " Right." "So you're here." "Yeah I'm not desperate." "I'm not desperate." " The cracks are showing already." " Yeah." "And so what brings you to speed dating?" "Uh oh it's a long story." "I've been." "We've got three minutes so shorten it." "Shorten my long story." "Yeah condense your story." "So how come you so long at speed dating." "What's your problem?" "Look you're a good looking bloke." "You're young." "Uh sl." "Slightly animate." "Wow she grills them doesn't she?" "It's clear that some people are better at speed dating than others." "And knowing how to flirt certainly helps." " Pastries and stuff." " Of course." " What about moustaches?" " Always." " You like moustaches?" " Yes." "OK let's say I'm having a really tough day at work." "So I come rolling into the door and." " You want to know." " What happens?" "I would be naked." " OK good start." " OK." "Well it's easy to see what her appeal to." "To men might be." "Members of the London Seduction Society are using a confrontational strategy." "And so you appear to have a boyfriend." "Just because you can't keep them or?" "No I just don't appear to like anyone." "Oh you're a fussy one." "Have you tried girls?" "We understand the game sense that we know that there is about ten guys that just before just said exactly the same thing as you." "Were talking about theirjobs and everything so I was a bit teasing about my job and when they started asking about." " You are." " Model." " Are you?" " Yes an model in this." "Oh I think." " Do you think?" " Yeah." "And that." "That put them a bit on an edge so it was a good thing to see them qualify themselves and." "And trying to - oh my god I need to impress uh this guy." "It certainly does look as though their strategy is to try and put the woman." "Lower her self-esteem relative to them so they will come across looking big." "Impressive and dominant." "But." "In fact." "The real key to seduction is to make the other person feel good not." "Not to diminish them." "Yeah that's the point." "I thought you looked really friendly." " I thought you were." " Yeah." "Thanks." "And I thought." "That is really." "Thanks Peter." "That is really nice." "After a disastrous set of first impressions" "Peter's personality is making all the difference." " Ask me." " Genre." "Rock." "Right the Chilli Peppers or Fu Fighters." "Crucial question." " Fu Fighters by far." " Really." " Ah." "Please." " Ah don't know." "But can he impress his one scientific match who scored him zero in the silent encounters." "Very hard to recover from first impressions." "So he's got an uphill grind." "Uh well basically I'm a university lecturer." "University lecturer." "Wow in what?" "In politics." " Ah right." "Oh respect." " Ah no." " So respect." " It's not rock and roll." "You know." "No but its respect." "Its politics." "OK so he pulled it back a little bit there." "She enjoyed the." "The prestige of his occupation and uh not turned off by his politics yet." "Anyway." " His status impressed her." " Yeah great." "But I wonder what she did with that dial." "Oh I forgot to." "The speed date has nearly run its course." "Beth has been unimpressed with almost all of her suitors and the feeling is mutual." "At last she meets Dave." "The one man the scientists think is compatible with her." " Hi." " Hi." " I'm Beth." " I'm Dave." "Hi Dave." "So tell me about you." "How old are you." "You're far too young for me." " How old are you?" " I'm thirty-one." "Are you." "God you look so young." " How old are you?" " I'm older than you." " Course you are." " Only joking." "Excuse me." "Yeah." "Yeah you don't make jokes like that." "Hello - a little bit of action here." "He's actually turning up on her." "So." "So how old are you then?" "You don't ask a lady that." " I'm thirty-two." " Thirty-two." "Ooops uh." "Uh." "Uh - she's put her foot wrong and she's plunged in his estimation." "Yes." "According to the perception analyser." " Now let's get off this age thing." " Oh OK." "What do you do?" "Um I am a director of a software company." " OH OK." "The boss." " Oh yeah." "Dave originally gave Beth sixty." "Now he turns the dial down and so does she." "The men and women retire to their respective bars." "And the data processing team springs into action." "OK." "Twenty-three date." "Thirty-eight friend." "Fifty-two friend." "In a few minutes everyone will find out who has date matches." "Who has friendship matches and who has nothing." "Peter has adopted a carpet bombing strategy." "I think I ticked nearly every box basically just to increase my chances." "Um I'm the type of person I kind of like people when I meet them so." "I think that's desperation basically." "Meanwhile the women are comparing notes." "He was um." "He's very stylish." " He was wearing ajacket and." " Who was?" "The finance manager yeah he was gorgeous." " He was an arse." " He knew it." "I'm sorry darling he was an arse." "The matches have been counted and the results are in." "It's the moment of truth for all concerned." "Well guys this is your mutual matches." "Everyone receives an envelope containing photographs of successful date matches." "Or news that they don't have any." "Beth made an offer on just one man." "But unfortunately he has chosen someone else." "I liked him." "I got him." "Has Peter's strategy been any more successful?" "Uh result." "She was lovely yeah." "Yeah I liked her a lot." "Can't remember her name which is a dis but um but she was" " Tracey." "Bet everyone's got Tracey but that's." "You've got Tracey." "You've got Tracey." "We've all got the." "The same women." "Clearly for two of the girls carpet bombing has worked." "But it's AJ who's the winner with a total of ten dates." "Oh uh never mind." "Share and share alike." "My tip is to um listen to guys and compliment them 'cos there's always something good about a guy." "Normally." "There's always." "There's always something." "Oh bollocks to that." "We've got three minutes." "That's all we've got three minutes." "Have to give them something for three minutes." "They should kiss our fucking feet." "So how successful were the three members of the London Seduction Society?" "Hi." "The." "The last guy that I saw I seriously have a pathological hatred for him." "Never in a million years would I go out with him." "I wouldn't care if he put me as a zero on his rating." "If me and him were the last people alive there is no way I would go there." "The guy is a chauvinist arsehole." "He loves himself." "Have their techniques worked on anyone?" "I didn't tick many girls." "I suppose." "That's uh already sort of like a bit of a you know you already reduce your number of matches." "Um." "It would be interesting to see how many girls in all ticked me." "At the end of the day." "Man two oh one three." "Emir received one offer of a date." "He was the only one of the seducers to have done so." "Well uh results are pathetic." "Out of about sixty encounters they get about one offer and that's no great surprise they way they're messing about there." "But it's the moment of reckoning for the scientists themselves." "Peter has been handed an envelope identifying his predicted match." "And the winner is." "Oh and she was my favourite as well that one." "But she picked everybody apparently." "Karl Grammer thought that facial similarity would predict sexual attraction." "Sarah was Peter's best match facially and for personality." "I would go for a." "So we're really onto something." "Unfortunately it wasnt enough." "I thought he seemed a really." "Really nice guy." "But I don't think I was initially attracted to him." "And for me I need to have physical attraction to be with somebody." "This reaction was shared by all of the couples who were informed of their face match." " You might possibly think he was your brother." " Yeah." "It would be quite weird for you to date him." "I don't want to date my brother that's the thing." "You don't want to date him." "No you can do better than that." " Yeah." "I see you with a tall dark guy." " Yes." "In the beginning we thought on the basis that uh - people who are married are looking alike." "That sameness or likeness would predict sexual attraction." "This was uh." "Uh apparently not the case in the data." "Actually the other uh - the opposite came around that dissimilar people uh make their dates together." "So we have to revise our theory." "This facial prediction has failed spectacularly but first impressions were decisive." "The perception analysers who that men and women who decided to date had made up their minds within seconds." "With few exceptions the three minute conversation made no difference at all." "Clearly looks are all important but its not the face." "It's the body that counts." "In terms of physical attractiveness there were two very important physical factors that made all the difference." "They were different for men than for women." "For men the factor that blew all the others out of the water was waist to hip ratio." "Waist to hip ratio is the size of the waist in relation to the hips and is a reliable indicator of fertility." "Well let's go for the curvaceous women." "On the software the men had created women with hourglass figures." "A caricature of the female form." "And at the speed date women whose figures most closely resembled this ideal got the most offers of dates." "So how much did male physique matter to women?" "So this." "This is muscle." "To about there yeah." "Yeah quite a lot to about there." "Yeah." "The women also went to considerable lengths to specify their ideal body types." "They're actually a bit bigger." "That's nice so that big." "Yeah I'm happy he looks nice." "And this is what they found optimally attractive." "But at the speed date there was no relationship between this figure and the body shapes of the most popular men." "For women it was height." "Women wanted tall men." "They were less interested in all the other possibilities of male shape." "It was height that was the most important physical attractiveness feature for men." "The two most popular men." "Both over five foot eleven." "Got thirty offers of dates between them." "Tall is good." "Tall is healthy." "Tall is successful." "So don't bother about going to the gym." "Don't bother about putting on new flashy clothes." "Be tall." "With the speed date over the men now come to the women's bar to meet them informally." "Do you look like those two?" "The experiment has shown that attraction is driven by physical attributes." "Which have little to do with similarity or compatibility." "But there is one scientist who did succeed in predicting facial attraction." "Uh here we are concerned um with your facial preferences for male faces." "And uh." "Dr Fink's morphing device replicate the effect of sex hormones on the face." "Moving from extreme female to extreme male." "Everyone in the agency was asked to select the most sexually attractive face." "So there." "Right OK." "This is frame number two hundred and eighty-seven." "I think this face tells me that he's not good looking enough to be unapproachable." "But he is good looking so I would approach him." "Right." "This kind of face you have selected uh is rather the so-called the father face." "Um." "Someone who is bringing resources to your children." "Uh rather uh long-term way but not a short-term way." "Then everyone's face was matched to the face morph." "And given a masculinity or femininity rating." "Beth was matched to frame ten ninety-six." "What Dr Fink found was a clear attraction of opposites." "Males with very masculine faces preferred females with very feminine faces and vice versa." "Uh are we going to kiss?" "Pretty soon yeah." " Well maybe." " You only ever say no." "Really." "Simon and AJ are an obvious example." "Sex hormones have pushed their faces in very different directions." "But the morphing device also predicted attraction between another couple." "Match found." "Beth and Dave matched for facial similarity." "But unlike most similar couples they also had reciprocal preferences according to the face morph." "OK I've two faces here." "Uh one is Beth's and the other one is Dave." "It's going to be interesting um to look at her preferences." "When I look at the frame numbers this was quite closely together." "This was two hundred and eight-seven." "And two hundred-fifty five." "So I do think there is a great chance that she will find him sexually attractive." "If I compare her face with regard to her femininity uh she has been given the number uh ten ninety-six." "What he likes is ten ninety-eight." "So I would say." "Just from the femininity calls this is exactly his woman." "Uh." "And I think there is a chance uh for him uh to get her." "I do really think so yeah." "By now everyone has been informed of the scientific predictions." "And Beth and Dave are discussing theirs." "In the compatibility ratings we're a hundred and twenty-seven - a married couple on average is a hundred and sixteen." " So we match." " What are you saying?" "We match scientifically." "Facially and mentally." "Really." " Yeah." "So I'm suggesting we elope and just try it out." " OK." "I mean I think." "I think you're an arse and I did write that on my paper but now I've spoken to you again you're actually quite nice." " I mean I think you're attractive." " And I find you attractive." "Well I think I was quite right with my prediction." "I'm only surprised." "I'm really happy." "I think they should pay me a lot of money yeah." " So I'm an arse." " You're not an arse." "I'm retracting my statement." "Look this is why we're compatible because we're having an argument like we're married." "Its two weeks after the experiment and Peter is preparing for a date." "But not with Tracey." "Well it turns out I got two matches um that night but on the night I thought I only had one." "Later I found out that there was actually a clerical error and Leanne had matched me and I had matched her." "And." "And I get up for this evening." "At the speed date he wasn't Leanne top choice." "She's only agreed to meet up because her favourite." "Steve." "Is dating someone else." "As a hobby I do stand up comedy and." " As a hobby." " Yes a hobby." "I think that's really." "Really amazing to be able to do that." "I'm really into comedy." "I always go to stand up." "It's good fun actually and everybody shakes your hand and." "Yeah." "Yeah completely." "I've been a hand shaker in my time." "And it's great fun." "It's clear that Peter and Leanne have lots in common." "Let me write it down for you." "I liked him." "I liked him and um we've been having a good old chat about what he does and what I do and I think that um he and I - regardless of anything that happens I think we could be friends." "And that's." "That's just the way I feel." "For Peter the scientists have failed." "But several other couples from the dating agency have also had follow up dates." "And there's been no shortage of sexual chemistry." "This was interesting." "We've got some couples here who are known to have ended up kissing." "Huh." "After the speed date." "But have there been any enduring relationships?" "The second time I saw her." "Sort of realised that no it's not." "It." "It's um." "No." "Basically." "I really." "Really don't know what went wrong." "I'd like to know." "She's a lovely girl but I just think we would really run out of things." "Or." "Or common points of uh of." "Of interest." "At the last minute she had a." "A meeting that - a work commitment that she couldn't get out of." "That's why he was too young for me." "It just." "Its." "It just didn't work." "Just didn't work that's all I can say." "What we know from the study and." "In fact." "All our experience is that uh the immediate chemical attraction is of priority for most people." "Uh they're not necessarily interested in their CQ scores with other people at all." "That's way too far in the future for them even to consider but it's a little bit like taking out pension plans." "Maybe it's something you ought to think about." "Because uh the long-term does matter." "Unlike the others Beth came away from the speed date empty handed." "But she and Dave were intrigued enough by their scientific match to arrange to meet for dinner and give the dating agency another chance." "Yeah I did give him a hard time." "Um at the speed dating." "But when I got to speak to him afterwards" "I realised that he was actually quite a nice chap and we had a really good laugh." "I'd be interested to see how he feels really." "'Cos I think he probably thinks I'm a bit of a bitch." "Huh." "I'm." "I'm surprised he's even turning up but um yeah let's see." " Oh hello how are you?" " Hello Dave." " How's it going?" " Very good." "Huh huh." "Nice to see you again." "Uh French thing." "If Beth and Dave hit it off it will be the scientists one successful match." "On the CQ test they shared identical answers on at least fifty percent of the questions." "There was a slight tendency for her to be uh higher in." "In libido or sexuality which might suggest that she would make the play in this situation." "And what would you like my dear?" "Can I have the lobster." "Served extra cool." "Can you poke its eyes out before um you kill it?" "Come on you must be able to do that." "Oh he wants to give it a good seeing to." "She is so different in these clips that I barely recognised her as a matter of fact." "Uh she's no longer putting the heat on the guy and asking him to give an account of himself." "And uh she's no." "She's evaluating his humour in a completely different way." "The date went well enough for" "Beth and Dave to meet up again." "A week later." "I said." "Uh you know." "Will there ever." "Will there be something between us?" "Where do you see that this is." "You know." "What is the purpose of this?" "And he said that um it wouldnt be going any further." "It." "There wouldn't be a relationship because um he." "You know he found me attractive um but there was no." "There was not going to be anything." "Anything further." "The way she spoke." "It reminded me of a member of my family that " "I grew up years and years ago and that the association was too strong for me to find it." "Find her attractive I guess." "Silly thing really but." "Well um yes he wasn't interested in a relationship but um I more than got the impression that if I wanted to go home with him then that would have been OK." "But that's guys for you." "What do I expect." "The world's first scientific dating agency has ended in failure." "These scientists hoped that their combined efforts could achieve a revolution in dating." "But not one relationship has been forthcoming." "Could it ever have succeeded?" "We know that many of the people who saw each other haven't really liked each other and they haven't maintained a long-term relationship." "So the question is why?" "And the answer I think lies in the fact of too many variables." "And I think there are idiosyncratic and they come from often from earlier childhood and they have a very powerful impact early on in the relationship." "And so we've got a lot out of this study." "There will be a lot of scientific papers with this wonderful database we have." "But to say that the uh ability to design a scientific dating agency is just around the corner is." "I'm afraid not true." "As a hundred men and women return to conventional dating at least some of them are in a positive frame of mind." "OK thank you very much." "Yes now I do politics jokes." "Here's a thing now." "Do you know that more people voted it the last uh in Big Brother than voted in the last election." "Do you know that?" "At the speed dating event" "I didn't expect to get any matches and I was really pleased I actually got two." "And date came out of it." "And that gave me a bit of you know uh confidence." "I mean if I'd come away without any matches and without any date I would have been." "Yeah I would have been feeling pretty bad but two out of twenty" "I reckon is a good ratio." "And I actually feel quite confident coming out of this and I know a bit more about myself." "I think science has shown me that I don't need to change." "I think that's one of the good things that's come out of it." "If you'd come back to me and said" ""Beth you're a washout"" "then fine." "I'd start thinking there's something seriously wrong and I need to go and see some kind of shrink." "Um but as I have been matched then no I don't think it's necessary to change and I." "I think that." "That you can compromise with somebody in a relationship but not change." "No." "Four couples are about to go on a scientific journey." "All are at very different stages of love." "Steve and Donna are getting married." "Hayley and Jay have just split up." "I hate this, I hate it so much." "Alan and Lynn are thinking of doing the same." "Do you it is pathetic." "Millie and Sid have been married for seventy years." "All of them happy." "But why does love last for some couples and not for others?" "Oh I can't hold it together any more." "Now scientists think they know the answer." "They can even predict from a wedding photograph when it will go wrong." "This couple is in trouble." "But when it does can the scientists do the most important thing of all - put it right?" "Can I ask the purpose of this?" "No please continue." "Oh - excuse the mess." "Everyone dreams of finding their perfect partner." "A year ago Steve met Donna." "Since then they've had a baby and spent only one night apart." "Been apart now for about fifteen or sixteen hours and uh I just can't wait to get back to her and see her face again and - she's going to be wearing a dress, her hair's going to be done," "the whole thing, so she's going to be full glory." "Every moment that we're together it's, the love is there and this love is great, yeah." "Sharn - where's my shoes." "In here." "Like all couples going up the aisle" "Steve and Donna believe their marriage will last for ever." "But today almost half of all marriages will end in divorce." "Six years after their wedding day Hayley and Jay have separated." "Jay had been having an affair." "The number one reason relationships fail." "And how do I know that it's not going to happen again?" "How can we get it back again?" "Please, so tell me how, what, what you think, how we can?" "I don't know." "Good morning." "Alan and Lynn went through the same thing twenty-five years ago." "They stayed together." "Now their marriage is threatened by the second biggest reason for divorce - constant arguing." "I arrive late home its where have you been, why are you late?" "No." " I've su, prepared your dinner." " No." "The least you can be here is on time or at least let me know you're going to be late." "I don't want such and such bananas I want Caribbean bananas and all this." "I mean do you realise uh - it is pathetic." "It's but that's so petty to bring that up." "But it is that I." "Shouldn't even no rubbish." "But Millie and Sid show that love doesn't have to go wrong." "Young people today seem to me to be looking for utter perfection." "Where's where is there perfection?" "Maybe in heaven." "I know it's, I know it sounds daft but everybody's got the possibility of creating their own heaven on this little bit of earth, if you want to." "So in the presence of god and before this congregation" "I proclaim that they are husband and wife." "Love, in the early days it always seems so easy." "But for many couples those happy feelings can soon turn sour." "Alan is manager of a large golf and leisure complex." "Go on, go on." "He's been married to Lynne for thirty-two years." "But now he seems dissatisfied." "I'm disappointed," "I'm disappointed that I haven't achieved more." "I'm disappointed that I don't earn more money." "I'm disappointed I don't live in a bigger house." "I'm disappointed that, you know, I can't afford a new car every year." "I'm frustrated because I haven't achieved what I would like to have achieved, out of life." "But seven years after getting married" "Alan's disappointment led to more than regrets." "I met this woman who I found physically attractive, and uh - we just fell into a - a, a, a highly uh - physical relationship." "And it got me away from - the domestic trivia which I found so dull." "Steady." "I didn't think that, that could happen to us at all." "Up to that point I thought we had the perfect marriage and I was very proud of him and he was on a pedestal and, and" " I was fl, I was floundering, absolutely floundering because the shock was just so much." "And then a year after that I then got into another relationship." "I find that I do say to myself 'why am I still here'." "Um I should have gone out and done something different or, or whatever but um, I don't know why I just, I just am still here." "Lynne and Alan struggle on." "But younger women who suffer infidelity are twice as likely to take decisive action." "Three weeks ago Hayley found out about Jay's affair." "And immediately threw him out of the house." "After fourteen years and three children together he's now living in a friend's spare room." "I felt on my own for the first week." "Um very alone uh." "I wanted to finish it." "That I didn't want to see anybody." "But uh" " I couldn't believe what I had done." "And the thought of other people's perceptions." "I felt ashamed knowing I'd just wrecked everything." "He said he adores me and he, he wants to spend the rest of his life with me and that he's made the biggest mistake of his life." "Which we both know - it's just how do we get over this?" "But I suppose in one way it can only get worse before it gets better." "It's the only way I'm looking at it." "I love her with all my heart." "And more." "Love her back." "I hope he'll be able to talk to me " "I don't want to lose that sort of thing that, that he doesn't talk to me 'cos uh - he's, he's always spoken." "Infidelity has all but destroyed Hayley and Jay's marriage." "But temptation is nothing new." " He did have a roving eye." " Oh yes." "But he never had, if anybody's eyes roved a little it might have been mine." "Uh but not, but nothing could ever have happened I know that." "So you tell me." "No I know that, I know that." "Millie and Sid seem just as in love as the day they married." "But why do some couples remain so positive while others descend into negativity?" "Dr. Angela Rowe is an experimental psychologist and an expert in the science of love and she suspects that the answer might lie in how our feelings literally alter the way we see our partners." "To find out if she was right she took photographs of twenty volunteers." "And four couples." "She then altered them into three progressively better looking images and three progressively worse looking images." "But when it came to a test who would choose which version of their partner?" "Your task is to select the best representation of your partner." "Your two minutes start now." "As the women settled in to look at the photographs each had to work out how her partner really looked to her." "In Donna's eyes did Steve look like this or this?" "Did Jay's ears really stick out quite that much?" "Quite confident I've got it right." "So one of them ha a big Spam head, he aint' got a big Spam head." "And was Alan beauty or beast?" "Next it was the men who were faced with the same dilemma." "Please start now." "There were some that were sort of outrageous no - uh - well from far off away not to be here but there was, there was a few that were." "And it sort of made it very difficult to find the right one." "I wasn't happy with any of them." "If he was my ph, photograph and I had to pay you" "I'd smash your machine." "OK you've finished gentlemen, thank you very much." "The tests went really well." "Um our hypotheses seem to have been supported." "Um and that's to say that the couples who are very happy and showed this idealisation of each other tended to choose partners from among the array of photos that were slightly more attractive than their actual partner." "Steve chose exactly as predicted." "Picking not the real image of Donna but the most ideal." "More surprisingly Donna did pick the correct image of Steve." "Both Millie and Sid had thought the test a nonsense." "But after seventy years of looking at the real thing both picked idealised versions of their partner." "Perhaps the reason their relationship has remained so strong." "Couples who are experiencing problems in their relationship or who've been troubled in a relationship for a while now showed the opposite result." "Despite Hayley's confidence she and Jay performed as expected, picking images less attractive than reality." "Reflecting perhaps the tensions in their relationship." "In fact, only Alan and Lynne went against expectation, both picking slightly idealised versions of the other." "Possibly a sign that they see each other in a positive light." "Though for Alan the motivation was perhaps more political than scientific." "Those photographs, bless her, did her nojustice whatsoever." "So I wanted to choose the picture that I felt was the most positive." "Despite Alan's choice the experiment had finally proved that the more in love you are the more you will idealise your partner." "A process that showed no sign of fading on" "Steve and Donna's honeymoon to Venice." "Um - yeah it's great, it's really, really great." "It's uh nice that I want to be there for Donna it really is." "Um feel very, very comfortable." "Uh don't really have a care in the world actually." "It's like we're on this big cloud." "Just Steve and I - we're on this love cloud and it's brilliant." "But just what was producing" "Steve and Donna's incredible feeling of perfect union?" "Back from Venice we sent Steve to the Institute of Psychiatry to find out." "As Steve lay down in the brain scanner an image of Donna was projected onto a screen." "But what was happening in his brain?" "Neuro-scientist, Andreas Bartells, has done this test on scores of in-love men and women and consistently found the same result." "Firstly we found some activation in parts of their reward system which explains why love makes you so happy and exhilarated and motivated to be with your partner and spend as much time as you can with your partner." "I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you." "And at the same time we found some regions that were suppressing the activity." "And as it turns out these are exactly those regions that are activated whenever you're asked to uh make critical social judgements, moral judgements, judgements of trustworthiness and so on about another person." "Nothing else cares." "Nothing else is." " Else matters does it." " Nothing else matters." "All we do is care for each other." "This is, this is our in these four walls." "These regions are all suppressed in the state of love and that may explain why people say love makes people blind." "So every time Steve looks at Donna two things happen." "His reward system floods with feel good chemicals." "And another part of his brain, the areas used for critical thinking, switches off." "Making him see Donna as the world's most perfect woman." "According to Bartells there are very powerful evolutionary reasons why love affects us this way." "What people don't realise maybe is that love is a mechanism that's been built in, into our brains so that we stay together with a particular person or in the case of mothers and, and father they stay with their child and help raising it." "No crying, no." "I know." "Don't." "Unfortunately research has also found that its effects last for only two to three years." "So what will the future hold for Steve and Donna when the chemicals do wear off?" "What if you could predict, before you even got married whether your relationship would last or fail?" "At Berkeley University one professor thinks he can dojust that." "And all he needs is a photograph of a person smiling." "It's a rather preposterous claim from one perspective that a photo can tell us what life is like." "Uh - but what we did to sort of first asses that is we took women's year book photos." "These are photos taken when they were twenty years old." "And we coded how warm and connected they looked." "Keltner was particularly interested in the intensity of the women's smiles." "But just what impact had their smiles had on the rest of their lives." "When these women returned to the laboratory thirty years later at about age fifty-two what we found is that women who had uh a stronger, warmer, more enthusiastic smile - um felt greater warmth towards other people in their lives." "They felt less anxious on a daily basis." "They felt like they were accomplishing their goals more." "And perhaps most astonishing was that they were actually more content and satisfied with their marriage and experienced greater well-being in general." "But just what is it about a smile that gives Keltner his clues?" "One of the really interesting things about facial expressions is that they tend to involve certain muscle actions that we can't fake." "So here is what we call a pleasurable smile." "And it involves this Zygomatic major muscle that just pulls the lip corners up." "But then it involves the contraction of the orbicularis oculi which raises this part of the cheek up - there's a little uh pouching right here under the eyelid." "That's really hard to produce voluntarily and when you see that action you know the person is feeling warm and kind and, and loving." "And then when you get a, a fake smile you see less of the action around the eyes." "Keltner believes the reason some people produce fake smiles and other people real one is all down to how much stress you experience in early childhood." "So to test Keltner's theory we gave him photographs of Lynne, Alan," "Hayley and Jay to analyse." "At the same time back in the UK clinical psychologist Frank Tallis had agreed to hear from the couples themselves." "Uh if I start with, with you Hayley." "I'm quite interested in your early childhood." "So first of all." "Well you know with this photo of, of Hayley uh - what's really interesting is you see a pleasurable smile but it's one that it really indicates an awareness of what other people are thinking." "So she's retracting her lips and uh sort of uh being aware of other people's regard." "I had to prove that I was doing well - like at school for instance I'd always like." "But I was very um, uh not very, I didn't." "I'd always go to the teachers "am I doing this right?"" "I wasn't really confident." "I was never confident when I was younger." "What's remarkable about Jay is that in all these photos we see a lot of negativity." "You cant help but be struck by how sullen he looks." "He's looking tough and even aggressive." "When you look at these photos you would assume there's, there's some marital conflict in the home and there's some sort of uh high level of strife and fighting and, and uh disconnect uh in the family." "And how did your uh you mum an dad get on?" "Quite a few arguments." "Um mainly sort of drink related - with uh - 'cos me dad used to play darts." "And was out near enough every night of the week." "And, and sort of when he come back there was a little argument or something like that and uh." "There used to be a bit of screaming and shouting." "Um, um." "You seemed to get a little bit upset then just thinking about it." " Well I'd rather not say." " OK." "OK." "In Lynne's adolescent photo is a, a lip press and a certain amount of control of the smile which suggests that she's quite aware of what others think and a little worried about that." "I don't want to stick out at all," "I want tojust sort of be comfortable and safe and." "Don't make me stick out." "Um." "So do you think this is a legacy of the financial hardship?" "Probably." "That there was a sense of inferiority?" "Probable, oh yes definitely." "Inferiority, inferior is a very good word because that's definitely how I felt as a child." "The thing that you see in Alan is a real poise and calm and very high level of enthusiasm." "But what's interesting is if you look at the photo with his mum, um he's showing a lot of pride and if you go to his photograph with his dad what we see here - which is interesting - is," "is a uh wince, uh accompanying his smile." "He's uh closing his eyes, furrowing his eyebrow, contracting that orbicularis oculi." "When people wince like this uh accompanying a smile it often accompanies when they've made a mistake." "And when they've done something wrong." "So maybe he feels um that something is amiss in his relationship there." "Think I was, was a bit of a disappointment one way or another." "There were high expectations that I would," "I would perform to a certain academic level which I never really fulfilled." "And did, did your father express that disappointment?" "Um in, in later years yes." "Um do you have uh any memories of him praising you?" "Um" " I'm sure there were times." "Um." "But do you actually find it difficult to remember?" "I mean." "Um yes, it's, its' not - those are memories that flash, those are the flashbacks." "How much stress a child experiences early really says a lot about how they respond to stress later in life, say in a marriage." "Uh and if they really undergo a lot of stress they have greater difficulties in, in responding to adult stress." "But being forewarned is forearmed." "If you can anticipate where you're going to be reactive or experience a lot of anger and have a little insight into that, that actually helps a lot." "Uh in your negotiations with your partner." "So if our couples could be shown how they respond to stress would it help them handle conflict better when it arises?" "It was time for Frank Tallis and Angela Rowe to find out." "The Trier Social Stress Test is one of psychology's most daunting examinations." "Designed to assess how well a person copes when under pressure." "Our couples will have to pitch for a newjob and perform a mental arithmetic task in front of three cameras and a panel of stony faced scientists." "To begin each participant sat quietly for half an hour while their normal level of the stress hormone cortisol was measured." "Then with that recorded the test began." "Both Alan and Lynne had reported less than ideal childhoods so how would stress affect them now over fifty year later?" "Um thank you very much indeed for the opportunity uh of applying for this uh very prestigious position." "We currently have a turnover ofjust something in the region of two point, we expect a turnover of two point four million." "I was also responsible for setting up all the systems," "I was responsible for recruiting all the staff." "All the purchases." "Something that I'd wanted to achieve for a number of years." "While Alan appeared calm" "Lynne's reaction seemed very different." "Can I ask the purpose of this please?" "No I can't ask the purpose of this." "OK." "Please continue." "Um what shall we talk about now?" "I'm standing here - feeling quite uncomfortable." "You still have some time, please continue." "While Hayley and Jay prepared their presentations" "Alan and Lynne had to do the maths test." "Counting backwards in multiples of thirteen." " Um nine hundred and ninety - six." " No." "Begin again." "Nine hundred and eighty-three." "No." "One thousand and twenty two." "One hundred and eighty." "No begin again." "You still have some time." "Uh go on talk to yourselves." "How's the time, is it nearly up now?" "Um I put new ceilings up and replaster through the uh the mansion." "Sorry." "Huh." "Ohhh." "Sorry." "I'm really nervous." "Looks very, very uncomfortable." "I can't think of much more to say really." "Do apologise." "Nine hundred and ninety six." "Thank you." "One thousand and nine." "Nine eight three." "He's got a rash, that's around his eyes." "And up to his ears, and it's gone under his neck." "Nine seven four." "No, uh begin again please, one thousand and twenty two" "I think we never thought he was going to cope too well with this situation and I think um." "He's not." "Thank you." "Clearly he was so stressed, he was even more stressed than we thought he was going to be." "He seemed to be almost hyperventilating." "The guy is totally stressed out." "Very extreme." "Alright - how far did you get down on the mental arithmetic then?" "Haven't a clue, just kept going as far as I could." " Yeah, did you get as far as six hundred?" " Yes I think I did." " Did you?" "Five hundred." " No." "Ah probably about the same them." " We'll check tomorrow." " OK." "See who did best." "Well, no probably not." "My stress levels have gone right through the ceiling." "Did you." " I'm alright now, I'm fine." " Yes." " What did you have to do?" "Had ajob interview?" " Yeah." "I knew you'd be crap at that." "I thought I feel sorry for Jay." "What's the matter didn't you like it?" "Like you're going to break down and cry in a minute." "The very fact of having gone through a stressful situation together seemed to have brought Hayley and Jay a little closer." "But the truth about how they react to conflict would soon be revealed." "The next day Angela and Frank were briefed on the results." "On average men respond far more strongly to stress than women." "Your Cortisol response was very low." "Was very muted." "I really thought it'd be higher than that." "I thought it'd be really high." " You cope you very well with stress." " Ah good." "Um, um." "Hayley was initially stressed but her results show she was soon coping." "So let's move on to, to Jay." "And this should come as, as, as no surprise to you that um indeed you have a marked cortisol response so his, the stress hormone was, was very high." "I was expecting that." "Jay had appeared very stressed." "And his results showed this." "You certainly came over as being very competent and, and, and very uh confident." "That was, however, discrepant with the, the test results which showed a, a marked male cortisol response." "Well it bears out what we were, were talking about yesterday really that, that, that I appear to be coping but in reality uh I'm not actually in a comfort zone." "Alan had appeared calm - happy even - but under the surface he had been stressed." "Let's, let's move on to, to you now Lynne, with respect to your cortisol response - in this it was very marked." "Women do show an elevation in cortisol levels as a response to stress." "But it's very elevated compared to most female responses." " And um higher than Alan's." " Right." "Male profile really." " So it's not at all typical then." " No." "Lynne had appeared under pressure and her results showed that she was suffering an extreme, typically male, stress response." "It feels, looking at it like that on the graph and seeing how high it's shot um - that's a bit of a worry." "I think I understand the way that Lynne ticks but " "I am" " I equally accept that I have a contribution towards the way that Lynne ticks and can be more aware of the impact that perhaps I'm having on, on uh on Lynne's stress levels." "I hope I want to help him deal with his stress now." "Because I don't want it getting worse." "I feel more sympathetic towards Jay." "You know the way that it annoys me sometimes when I feel sympathetic, 'cos obviously of our situation but - if you know what I mean, but I think he understands that." "Both couples have taken another step in understanding how they really feel." "Soon they get more help to save their marriages." "But first how did Dacher Keltner rate their chances?" "What we see in, in the photos of Lynne and Alan is really the striking independence uh that Alan shows of the emotional composition of, of Lynne." "And it's really clear here." "He has this, this very strong, assertive, outgoing smile uh very composed." "Um and it's as if she has been pasted in." "You know she seems to be in an entirely different context than him." "What then of Hayley and Jay?" "Jay seems a lot different." "You know he just seems plugged in and happy and connected." "He's leaning toward her, there's a symmetry in their displays." "He's touching her, quite clearly." "So how had Jay made the shift from stressed childhood to his happy wedding photos?" "A really important thing that I think development psychologists have learned is that you can start off life with one family context and temperament." "And then these big events happen and they can re-direct you." "So my guess is, you know, uh between this photo and then this wedding day photo something big happened to Jay." "And you know the obvious candidate is his connection to Hayley." "Um but something clearly has given him strength and warmth." "And when we recall Alan how independent of Lynne he seems uh we see uh something different." "You know if I had to make a call for um - how their lives were going to turn out together" "I'm a little bit more hopeful for Hayley and Jay." "Sid." " Do you want me?" " Yes." "OK." "The mistake is thinking that that wonderful thing that you've got - you have done some work at it." "It's like going out, going to, to work." "If you want to get on you've got to, you've got to show your boss that you're doing something for your living." "And it's the same thing with a marriage." "You've got to show your wife that you care and, and you do your best for her." "And she uh, has to do the same for you." "Go on." "And as time goes on you are becoming more and more secure in your love and in your marriage and then it gets better still." "Millie and Sid show that to succeed a marriage takes work." "No it's alright." "But for couples already at the point of divorce it's almost impossible to know where to begin." "I'm just confused." "I'm confused Jay, you've just said to me out there that you should know what's going on in your head." "Jay I'm as confused as you are." "I can't believe that you're in the same relationship with me and you believe that the relationship doesn't have a problem." "I don't know what's going on in my head." "I want, I want to know." "I need to know." "It's not just how you're feeling, it's how I'm feeling as well Jay." "Now I, it reached a point where I cannot talk to you about it any more because we're just going over the same old stuff again and again and again." "Howard Markman is one of the world's foremost relationship experts." "He's worked with thousands of couples and studied what makes love thrive and what makes it fail." "We're looking for the four research based danger signs." "Based on twenty-five years of research, we used to take twenty-four hours to code one hour of video tape, micro-analytically." "Based on that research now we can focus in on four danger signs." " Sign one" " Withdrawal." "Men often do what we call the appeal to god." "Uh women pursue in the face of withdrawal." "Tell me why you're being so miserable today, come on." "What?" "Tell me why you're being so miserable today." "Come on uh tell me why then." " Sign two" " Escalation." "Negative, negative, negative, negative." "You're not prepared to change." "You're very - your lifestyle is the way you like it at the moment." "How would you want me change it." "Well I don't know how I would have you change it." "Well you, you must know." "But, but you're, you're inflexible." " Sign three" " Negative interpretations, you never loved me, you're just like your father." "You're not interested, you never have been interested." "No that is not correct." " And sign four - invalidation." "When you're attacking the other person verbally, sometimes physically and when that happens the relationship is often headed for divorce." "Fortunately none of our couples showed signs of invalidation." "Though the three other danger signs were present." "But with Hayley and Jay living apart." "And Lynne and Alan barely talking, could Markman's method really help our couples?" "What I try to help these couples do is to help them talk about fighting." "Conflicts are inevitable, we need to talk about them but we need to do this and this is the whole key - safely." "One of the things that you're going to need to do is to try to, together, weight the, to deal with the affair and put it behind you." "Is that something that you both would want to do?" "Definitely if it saves the marriage." "Yeah." "And it's a way forward." "The way I want the two of you to be managing conflict from this point on is to only talk about issues when you both say" ""OK we're going to have a discussion now is this a good time?"." "And I'm uh, in fact, going to suggest that you have a weekly meeting to talk about your conflicts and that's the only time that you talk about them." "One of the best things that uh a couple who's feeling distant can do is to reach and just hold your partner's hand." "Do you feel comfortable reaching out and holding Hayley's hand right now?" "Hold it, you're not holding hands any more." "Terrific." "Too often people take the relationship for granted." "They don't invest in going out on a date or talking as friends." "I'd like to suggest to the two of you having a date night." " Is that something you an agree to do?" " Yes." "Can I get you to agree to that?" "Lynn'll be delighted." "I'll be delighted." "OK terrific." " Thank you very much." " Thank you." "Try and go away and work on things that we've been sort of asked to do." "Uh this'll work as long as we're committed to it." "Alan and Lynne are going to have more challenges ahead." "It's not to say that Jay and Hayley don't have some danger signs." "They have some escalation and withdrawal." "But with Lynne and Alan if they really decide to do their part - as they move forward they have the opportunity to have the second half of their marriage be significantly better than the first if that's what they want." "Disagreements are inevitable." "The key to Markman's method is to stop couples fighting destructively." "But not everyone has to learn the hard way." "OK wait a minute." "I'm busy I'm doing something." " Do we argue?" " All the time." "Well I'd say." "There's never a day goes by." "Always." "Never a day goes by." "If she says that happened, I will say no, automatically we argue about it." "I don't take any notice of it." "It, it." "I'll, I'll say to him I'd like to do so and so - he'll say to me "not bloody likely"." "Excuse my language." "Oh not bloody likely." "And." "And, and ten minutes later we're doing it." "And he's done it." "Of course we argue, arguments." " Oh plenty of arguments." " Not really." "If we have a row." "Its many years since we've had a row." "It has to be a, a good reason for it." "Come on Mill, the avocado's getting cold." "For some couples cutting out the rows comes naturally." "For others it takes work." "In Markman's programme the next task is having fun." "Friday night is date night." "OK what I need you to, to do is to gel with each other." "Yes." "OK." "Life is just a dance ha ha ha." "Tell you what we're going to do, we're going to do the first three moves." "We're going to do the mamba." "Cucaracha, and the open step." "And stop." "We have to be here, how did we get from." "Don't worry about it, trust me, I'll take you through it." "Oh that's a bit fast isn't it?" "We to start." "Can we start any time." "OK." "Do you want, start any time so?" "So it's." "One two." "No we're, we're doing this." "Oh well that's not, OK." "Going to count you in and one, two, three four, six, seven." "One, two, three, five, six, seven and one, two, three, four, five, six and one, two, three, four, five, six." "My legs are all over the place." "Three step." "Five, six, seven." "One." "Rumba I've lost it completely." "Um OK." "It's just the speed, it's." "Do you want to do it again?" "Because we, it's like anything else when you think about it you can't do it." "It's like driving a car for the first time." "When you're looking at al the sticks and the gears and the brakes and everything." "Breath, smile, feel the music, this is a very." "Recording." "It sort of came to me qu, really sort out of the blue that uh that uh really and truly I haven't felt at all relaxed uh in Alan's company um on the Friday night and um worse than that um I'm find it," "it would seem that I'm becoming increasingly um unrelaxed in his company." "On an everyday basis." "One week after seeing Markman for Lynne and Alan the programme seemed to be creating as many problems as it was solving." "Hayley and Jay were still living apart but slowly spending more time together and for them Howard Markman's rules did seem to be getting results." "Uh we've spoken a lot more and it has been more, more open I suppose." "Jay's just left um it's Monday." "I didn't really want him to go." "Finding it really, really hard tonight." "Sort of leaving her um." "I have to keep kind of stopping him from going, I want him to stay." "My heart wants him to stay." "My mind keeps saying well you've got to go." "For both couples there was clearly more of Markman's method to take on board." "'Cos I think a lot of the conflict between us." "Is due to total discommunication and misunderstanding." "I - am not saying what I feel, I believe, because I don't feel um that I can say it." "Um without fear of conflict." "You accuse me of arguing." "And what I would say is not, not - it's not arguing it's having a difference of opinion." "In my opinion it's important that I can express freely, without fear of ummmmm " "uh ridicule or disagreement." "I believe from what has been said we are both not expressing ourselves openly and honestly for fear of upsetting one another." "I must not be frightened any more of saying what I think." "And I think I've always been a bit scared about um, letting off steam." "With Alan uh because I've been scared of the consequences." "But if the relationship is to continue um - then we have to - to communicate as effectively as we have been doing in the last couple of weeks." " Have a good day." " You too." "Bye, see you later love." "Days are different." "So, you know the last sort of six days have been very, very good." "Uh but then again you take one day at a time." "Three weeks ago I, I didn't even know where I'd be in the future, three weeks ago." "I thought that I uh didn't have a future." "And now I've got more, I've got a lot of hope for the future now." "I don't want to ask her if I can move back in." "I want her to ask me to move back in so then I know sort of her timing's right and I'm not putting any pressure on her." "Uh I don't know what's stopping me from saying the next step, just, I don't know what's stopping me." "Maybe date night would help them take the final step." "Yeah I can't imagine sort of anything better," "I love her so much that it actually hurts." "She is my life and she is my everything and, you know, I don't want to be with anybody else," "I want Hayley." "Know the feeling you get when you first meet someone and it's, you like you get that stomach thing, everyone gets it don't they - like you." "It's like I'll," "I'll be sitting there and I'll remember how much I love him and how much he loves me and then my stomach'll go." "After six long weeks on Markman's programme it was time for our couples to revisit him for one last session." "And despite their initial troubles both couples seem to have made amazing progress." "What's the process been like?" "Has it been worth it?" "The process has been um - um - uneven." "It's um, I but I think we have managed to keep uh quite a lot of the conflict out of the relationship." "Because of the things that we learned." "So it's been tough, there's been some up and downs as you said but you're moving in the right direction." "It's been working." "Well we're three rungs up a twenty run ladder." "But we're on the ladder, that's the main thing, we're on the process and uh it's only through our own determination to, as you said earlier on, if we're determined to make it happen we can make it happen." "I think it's a good thing." "It's a good thing you're doing, you're courageous." "What happened is sort of it - it happened um - but it's not until you start pulling away from someone and losing someone to realise of how much you know that I do love Hayley and want to be with Hayley for the rest of my life." "I always would have said before - the time he cheated on me that I would never have him back, ever." "I never would have thought I would have been able to over, overcome this." "So I think that's what's been useful to me to making - realising that, that - how special love is." "And I, I, I feel that you're back on track." "Two days after seeing Markman" "Hayley called Jay to a special conflict meeting." "So if I said to you uh, if you can live with the bits like that and if, uh and, and me being a little bit like that and" "I said to you "right, I might be like that sometimes"" "if you could put up me like that would you come back?" "You know I would." "So will you come back home then?" "Of course I will." "Get my stuff." "This to my bedroom for the last two months." "It's time to go home." "It's wonderful - that beginning is wonderful, that excitement, that, that excitement must fade uh somewhat." "It cannot keep at that pace and that in my opinion is when true love sets in." "When the infatuation, when you." "When you tu." "Infatuation more or less slows down." "That's when the love comes in." "That's when love comes in." "And if you're sensible that is where you begin to create what should be a good marriage." "It's nice being back as a family." "Hope to be able to keep it up." "I will commit to making a conscious effort not to belittle your opinion, whatever it may be." "But to respect that opinion." "And I will make the same commitment." "Deal OK."