In 1997, psychologist Arthur Aron gathered two strangers into his laboratory for an experiment, your objective? Use science to make them fall in love. The method was a questionnaire of 36 personal questions, divided into three sections, whose degree of intimacy was growing. After that, the couple had to stand for 4 minutes if they looked in silence.
By sharing intimate information, Arthur believed, within 45 minutes a love bond would be born between the two strangers. And was not he right? One of the research pairs even got married.
After 18 years, this story has come back to life because a NY Times writer did the test. And guess what, it worked. Mandy Len Catron, 33, did not exactly follow Arthur’s primer. In his case the questionnaire was carried out in a bar, with a colleague of academia.
“We spent two hours with the iPhone in hand, alternating who asked the question,” Mandy wrote in her column in the newspaper. “Our level of vulnerability has increased and suddenly I realized that we were in an intimate territory, a process that usually takes weeks or months” that makes Two Strange People to Fall in Love
What happened in the end? Yes, they fell in love. “Although it’s difficult to blame 100% of the study for this, it gave us the path to the relationship.” Curious to know the formula? See also:
SET 1: SMILING THE POT
1) Being able to choose anyone in the world, who would you invite to dinner?
2) Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3) Before making a phone call, do you rehearse what you are going to say? Because?
4) What would make a perfect day for you?
5) When was the last time you sang to yourself? And for someone else?
6) If you were able to live to age 90 and keep the mind or body of your 30s for the last 60 years of your life, which of the two would you choose?
7) Do you have a secret guess about how you’re going to die?
8) Name three things that you and your partner seem to have in common.
9) What in your life do you feel very grateful for?
10) If you could change anything about the way it was created, what would it be?
11) In four minutes, tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12) If you could wake up tomorrow and gain any quality or skill, what would it be?
SET 2: INCREASING INTIMITY
13) If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what did you want to know?
14) Is there anything you’ve ever dreamed of doing for a long time? Why did not you do it?
15) What is the greatest achievement of your life?
16) What do you value most in a friendship?
17) What is your most cherished memory?
18) What is your most terrible memory?
19) If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are living now? Because?
20) What does friendship mean to you?
21) What is the role of love and affection in your life?
22) Alternately, share something that you consider to be a positive trait of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23) How close and affectionate is your family? Do you feel that your childhood was happier than most other people?
24) How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
SET 3: OPENING THE GAME
25) Make three true statements containing the word “we” each. For example, “we’re both in this room feeling …”
26) Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone I could share with …”
27) If you are on the way to becoming a close friend of your partner, please share something that would be important for him or her to know.
28) Tell your partner what you like about him or her; be very honest, say the things you cannot tell someone you just met.
29) Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30) When was the last time you cried in front of someone else? And alone?
31) Tell your partner something you already like about him or her.
32) What, if anything, is too serious to make a joke about?
33) If you were to die tonight with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what do you most regret not having told anyone? Why did not you say so?
34) Your house, which contains everything you own, catches fire. Once you save your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely save any item. What would it be? Because?
35) Of all the people in your family, which death would be most disturbing to you? Because?
36) Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she would handle it. Also, ask your partner to tell you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.