WHITE COLLAR | ISSUE 010
36love
Questions that help people fall in
The topic came up in the middle of a book club meeting that I recently became a part of. So far we hadn’t discussed any books and I was beginning to think that, this was just an elaborate excuse for people to meet up and hang out on Saturday evenings so that they can help each other rationalize ‘the human experience’. This was exactly what I was looking for! “So there’s this set of questions,” started one of the members, “they’ve been said to help people fall in love.”
Immediately my mind went to this New York Times piece by Mandy Len Catron. This written piece pointed to the work of the psychologist Arthur Aron, who succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory, through his study. At the end of the study they list two sets of questions one for ‘small-talk’ and another for ‘closeness generation’. The study in itself is purely academic and drains away all emotion or sense of wonder, and it begs the question will an experiment that generates love in a laboratory setting, have the same rate of success in a real world scenario?
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In the real world, there’s plenty of ambient noise from conversation and background music. If done in a restaurant or bar, then there’s a high chance of interruption from wait-staff or the occasional run in from a friend from college/high school, who keeps talking despite the fruitless attempts to end the conversation and the constant hints that you were on a date. Could these questions survive the constant interruptions that colour everyday life? I’d advice that you think ahead, and factor privacy into your plans if you’re going to use these questions. It’s obvious that a majority of the people skimming through this article are looking to use these questions. So here are some of the rules that were used in the study:
Be honest: no matter how good/perfect you want to seem to your partner, be honest about
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