36 Questions to Get Your Love What if I told you that all that it takes for a complete stranger to fall in love with you is asking 36 questions? Plus 4 minutes of staring at each other in the eyes but hey, after all that talking you will be practically married by that time anyway. At least according to psychologist Arthur Aron, it’s as easy as that! By: Ana Marta Laranjeira
a crowded place where people would very likely think you were absolutely crazy). By the end of the night, the two went from being simple acquaintances to moving on to a— surprise, surprise!—love relationship that is still lasting. Personally, I feel that from a certain age it gets harder and harder to make a serious connection with someone for various reasons (lack of time, previous bad experiences, or the simple fact that most people won’t stay that long in your life).
In his studies on interpersonal closeness, Aron and his team assembled couples of complete strangers in a lab. When selecting a pair of people there were two conditions: making sure they did not disagree on fundamental matters, and letting them know that the other person would probably like them, creating a certain expectation. They would be then left alone in a room to each other for the first time, with a paper containing three sets of questions (making a total of 36). These questions are aimed to guide them towards self-disclosure and the reveal of other intimacy-associated behaviours. The intensity of the questions would gradually increase with each set out of the three in total.
pairs even got married after getting to know each other during the process! Still, all of this happened about 20 years ago, but writer Mandy Len Catron has recently brought the subject back with her essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This” (the title really is self-explanatory). Basically, Catron applied this experiment to her own personal life. Well, not exactly, starting with the fact that she did not do it with a random person, but with an old acquaintance that she had recently met again. Also, the environment where it happened was certainly very different from the original empty lab: a crowded bar and, later on, a bridge near by when the two felt too embarrassed to just stand in the bar looking at each other for four The result is an accelerated intimacy between the entire minutes. (Which is quite understandable couples who, an hour prior to the experiment, as simply staring into someone’s eyes for that had never seen each other before. One of the long must be “terrifying” on its own, let alone in
Children—and maybe a couple of us by the end of a drunken night— tend to share everything, from hopes and beliefs to embarrassing dreams and secrets with people that they don’t necessarily know that well. This ends up making it much easier to develop a strong relationship. I see these 36 questions as a standard for the rest of us to follow and achieve with a person of our choice. It could amount to, I wouldn’t necessarily say love, but most definitely accelerated intimacy—which was, in reality, the main goal of the original experiment. I do think these questions can be a great tool that one should try to use—either with a possible love interest, or as way to get to know someone better and potentially start a friendship from there. I am extremely curious to try it myself (I am now officially accepting volunteers to participate). For all of the intrigued ones like myself, you can check out and try the 36 questions now posted on our website. (PLUS the four minutes of eye contact, no cheating!) www.suug.co.uk/media
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