The 36 questions, and what they actually do

They are known as “the 36 questions that lead to love”. The experiment behind that title is published, and its mechanism comes down to one principle: questions that grow more and more personal, asked in turn.

The 1997 experiment

Arthur Aron and colleagues published in 1997, in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a paper titled “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness”. The starting question is methodological: can you produce in a laboratory, in under an hour, the closeness two people normally take months to build.

The setup is simple. Two strangers sit facing each other and receive a list of questions to ask in turn. The list holds three sets of twelve questions, and each set is more personal than the last. A control group receives, instead, a list of ordinary conversation topics.

At the end, participants in the first group report feeling markedly closer to their partner than those in the second. The study measures a feeling of closeness between two people.

The paper reports three experiments. The first establishes the famous result. The other two tested whether the effect depended on being matched on opinions, or on knowing in advance that the other person would like you; neither factor had a significant effect. What brings two people closer is the exchange itself.

The order matters more than the questions

The principle of the setup is the escalation of the questions. The first set asks whom you would invite to dinner if you could choose anyone. The last asks which object you would save from a burning house, and which death in your family would affect you most.

Between the two, each question licenses the next. This is the principle of reciprocal, gradual self-disclosure: nobody answers an intimate question asked cold, but almost everyone answers it after twenty minutes of an exchange in which the other has taken risks too.

• Reciprocal: both people answer, in turn.
• Gradual: difficulty rises in steps. A question that is too personal, asked too early, makes people retreat.

The Arsentis guide takes up that rise. The suggested order is an aid: you are free to follow the order of the guide, and to answer every question or only a few.

• Framed: the list decides the questions for the two people.

Researchers have also reused Aron’s protocol as a laboratory tool, to create in a single session closeness between two strangers — notably in work on relations between groups, where the aim was to start a friendship between participants from different backgrounds.

Two common mistakes about the study

In 2015, a newspaper piece made the experiment famous: its author recounted trying the 36 questions with an acquaintance, and that they had fallen in love. Two mistakes spread with that piece.

The first is the headline. The study measured closeness: a list of questions brings two strangers closer in forty-five minutes in a laboratory.

The second is the four-minute mutual gaze, often presented as the protocol’s thirty-seventh step. The four-minute gaze comes from the 2015 piece: its author added the gaze to her own essay. The protocol published in 1997 holds the 36 questions only.

Ten questions rather than thirty-six

The Arsentis guide takes up Aron’s principle with its own questions. The guide holds ten questions, written for two people who already know each other.

The duration changes too: about thirty minutes at home, at your own pace. That is where couples naturally stop, and about thirty minutes is plenty to compose an artwork.

Every answer is the right one. A body produces variations constantly, even when you think you feel nothing.

The guide is a document to print. During the capture, your eyes stay on the person facing you.

References

Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297234003