The 36 Questions To Fall In Love:

The Research Behind The Viral

Experiment

Author: Kelly Gonsalves

Updated on August 22, 2022

History The questions Research behind

the questions Falling in love Do they
work?

Can asking each other a structured set of

questions really help two people fall in
love?

That's the premise behind the famous "36

questions that lead to love," an experiment
popularized by a viral essay and inspired
by real psychological research on how
intimacy forms.

Today, people are bringing the quiz with

them on first dates, and marriage
therapists assign the activity to couples
looking to emotionally reconnect.

Here's how the 36 questions work and the

science behind them.

What are the 36 questions to fall

in love?

The so-called 36 questions to fall in love

are a set of questions developed in the
1990s by psychologists Arthur Aron, Ph.D.,
Elaine Aron, Ph.D., and other researchers
to see if two strangers can develop an
intimate connection just from asking each
other a series of increasingly personal
questions.

The experiment became massively popular

after the New York Times Modern Love
column published an essay by Mandy Len
Catron in 2015 about her experience trying
the questions with an acquaintance whom
she went on to marry.

The 36 questions:

Set I

1 Given the choice of anyone in the

world, whom would you want as a
dinner guest?

2 Would you like to be famous? In what

way?

3 Before making a telephone call, do

you ever rehearse what you are going
to say? Why?

4 What would constitute a "perfect" day

for you?

5 When did you last sing to yourself? To

someone else?

6 If you were able to live to the age of

90 and retain either the mind or body
of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years
of your life, which would you want?

7 Do you have a secret hunch about how

you will die?

8 Name three things you and your

partner appear to have in common.

9 For what in your life do you feel most

grateful?

10 If you could change anything about

the way you were raised, what would it
be?

11 Take four minutes and tell your partner

your life story in as much detail as
possible.

12 If you could wake up tomorrow having

gained any one quality or ability, what
would it be?

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Set II

1 If a crystal ball could tell you the truth

about yourself, your life, the future, or
anything else, what would you want to
know?

2 Is there something that you've

dreamed of doing for a long time?
Why haven't you done it?

3 What is the greatest accomplishment

of your life?

4 What do you value most in a

friendship?

5 What is your most treasured memory?

6 What is your most terrible memory?

7 If you knew that in one year you would

die suddenly, would you change
anything about the way you are now
living? Why?

8 What does friendship mean to you?

9 What roles do love and affection play

in your life?

10 Alternate sharing something you

consider a positive characteristic of
your partner. Share a total of five
items.

11 How close and warm is your family?

Do you feel your childhood was
happier than most other people's?

12 How do you feel about your

relationship with your mother?

Set III

1 Make three true "we" statements each.

For instance, "We are both in this
room feeling..."

2 Complete this sentence: "I wish I had

someone with whom I could share..."

3 If you were going to become a close

friend with your partner, please share
what would be important for him or
her to know.

4 Tell your partner what you like about

them; be very honest this time, saying
things that you might not say to
someone you've just met.

5 Share with your partner an

embarrassing moment in your life.

6 When did you last cry in front of

another person? By yourself?

7 Tell your partner something that you

like about them already.

8 What, if anything, is too serious to be

joked about?

9 If you were to die this evening with no

opportunity to communicate with
anyone, what would you most regret
not having told someone? Why haven't
you told them yet?

10 Your house, containing everything you

own, catches fire. After saving your
loved ones and pets, you have time to
safely make a final dash to save any
one item. What would it be? Why?

11 Of all the people in your family, whose

death would you find most disturbing?
Why?

12 Share a personal problem and ask

your partner's advice on how he or
she might handle it. Also, ask your
partner to reflect to you how you
seem to be feeling about the problem
you have chosen.

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The research behind the 36

questions

The 36 questions were developed by a

team of researchers led by Arthur Aron,
Ph.D., and Elaine Aron, Ph.D., two
psychologists (husband and wife) who
have spent decades researching how
attraction, intimacy, and romantic love
form.

In 1997, the team published a paper in the

1
Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin 1 describing a series of
experiments in which they asked pairs of
strangers (or, in one version of the
experiment, pairs of college classmates) to
take turns asking each other each of the
36 questions.

At the end of the experiment, the pairs

were asked to spend four uninterrupted
minutes staring into each other's eyes.

"One key pattern associated with the

development of a close relationship among
peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal,
personalistic self-disclosure," the Arons
and their fellow researchers write in the
paper. "The core of the method we
developed was to structure such self-
disclosure between strangers."

The questions are designed to help two

people gradually reveal more and more
about themselves, as well as identify ways
in which they're similar to each other and
say the things they like about each other
out loud.

This combination of self-disclosure,

perceived similarities, and being open to
getting close to each other is what's been
found to accelerate the creation of feelings
of closeness and intimacy.

That said, as Elaine Aron notes in a

Psychology Today blog post, the questions
weren't specifically designed to help
people fall in love—they're simply about
creating closeness.

The questions have been used in many

other psychology studies, from helping
married couples get closer to each other
to helping people reduce racial prejudice.

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S I G N U P N OW

Can two strangers fall in love with

the 36 questions?

The 36 questions are designed to help two

strangers develop feelings of closeness
and intimacy.

They may or may not "fall in love," but the

Arons' research has shown they are
effective at creating intimacy.

"We should also emphasize that the goal of

our procedure was to develop a temporary
feeling of closeness, not an actual ongoing
relationship," the researchers write in the
paper.

They conclude, "Are we producing real

closeness? Yes and no. We think that the
closeness produced in these studies is
experienced as similar in many important
ways to felt closeness in naturally
occurring relationships that develop over
time. On the other hand, it seems unlikely
that the procedure produces loyalty,
dependence, commitment, or other
relationship aspects that might take longer
to develop."

mbg tip

Here are some signs you're in love and

what love feels like, if you need some
reference points.

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Do the 36 questions to fall in love

really work?

The 36 questions have helped at least

some couples fall in love, though others
haven't had as much luck using them.

Catron, the writer behind the viral Times

essay, went on to marry the man she did
the experiment with.

Another pair from one of the Arons'

original experiments with the question set
also got married, and the entire research
team attended the wedding.

"I wish I had statistics on couples that have

resulted from it, but I know of at least a
few where the people contacted me
directly," Daniel Jones, editor of the
Modern Love column at the Times, said in
a 2016 WBUR podcast episode about the
essay.

Here's how the 36 questions worked out

for other people who've since tried the
experiment:

"At the end of the night, I felt as if I knew

this guy better than I know my best friend.
... While I didn't fall head over heels in love
that night, I wouldn't mind getting to know
this person better. Do we have a second
date? I don't know yet." —Liu Kai Ying, via
Zula

"[The person I tried this with] and I are not

dating... I think the exercise actually
inhibited us. It made the relationship seem
more serious than it was. What should have
been something new and experimental
became something with a sense of urgency.
It made the DTR ('define a relationship')
seem immediately necessary as opposed to
us taking the time to discover what made us
a good match." —Julianna Young, via
Zappos

"Before the date she said, 'We probably

don't have all that much in common, but I'll
meet up anyway.' After the date her position
had moved to the opposite, that we might
even have too much in common. I think that
the exercise made for a very satisfying
experience, and so far the two times that
I've tried this have made for WAY better
dates than any others I've been on this
year." —a user on Reddit

"I liked the structure of the questions, but at

the end, things fell apart. I couldn't shake
the fact that we were so different. I enjoyed
talking and having a script made me feel like
I could relax without having to make any
stupid heavy-handed flirty small talk. But
the at same time, if I was so stoked on not
having to flirt, wasn't that a red flag? The
same sexless reason I had enjoyed doing the
questions also underlined the fact that I
didn't really feel a ton of physical chemistry.
The worst was when [the guy I did this with]
said he wouldn't want to do the questions
again with someone else." —Carina Hsieh,
via Cosmopolitan

"There were not a lot of new revelations. But

we both cried over things we shared. It felt
like real intimacy. It felt like a sign we were
going to last. Instead, our relationship barely
made it three months." —Alicia M. Cohn, via
the Washington Post

"It's impossible to guess how long the

amped-up intimacy will last. But I'm more
certain than ever that I'm with the right
person." —Melanie Berliet, via Salon

"Turns out we already knew all the answers

to the questions we asked, even the more
intense ones. And the ones we actually did
not know turned into debates of 'really,
would you really approach it that way? Don't
act like I don't know you.' And we ended up
going to bed cranky because of all the
bickering." —Meagan Shapiro, via The
Odyssey

"I tried it a year ago on some guy on a

second date. We're currently living
together." —another Reddit user

mbg tip

If you've already tried the 36 questions,

here are over a hundred conversation
starters for couples and first date
questions.

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Kelly Gonsalves
Contributing Sex & Relationships Editor
Kelly Gonsalves is a multi-certified sex educator and
relationship coach helping people figure out how to
create dating and sex lives that actually feel good …
With her warm, playful approach to coaching and

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