In 1997, social psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues published a study that would, two decades later, go viral worldwide: a set of 36 questions designed to generate closeness between strangers.

The study's claims were striking: pairs of strangers who answered these questions for 45 minutes reported significantly higher feelings of closeness than pairs who engaged in standard small talk. One couple from the original study later married.

Then in 2015, writer Mandy Len Catron tried the questions on a date and wrote about the experience for the New York Times. The essay, "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This," was shared millions of times.

The questions, now often called "the 36 questions" (we've added one based on subsequent research — the mutual gaze instruction), have become one of the most referenced tools in modern relationship psychology.

Here's what the science actually shows, why the questions work, and how to use them.

The Research Behind the Questions

Aron's study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (1997), was called "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness." It was based on a framework Aron called the "self-expansion model" of attraction and closeness.

The core idea: closeness develops when people share and are met with genuine attention and vulnerability, in a progressively deepening pattern.

The 36 questions are structured to operationalize this:

  • Set 1 (Questions 1–12): Relatively low vulnerability. Preferences, opinions, hypothetical scenarios.
  • Set 2 (Questions 13–24): Increasing depth. Personal experiences, self-reflection, values.
  • Set 3 (Questions 25–36): High vulnerability. Fears, regrets, deep personal sharing.

The structured escalation does several things:

Reciprocal disclosure: Each person answering creates reciprocal social pressure — the "matching" phenomenon in disclosure. When someone shares something personal, the other person naturally responds with something of equivalent depth. This creates a cycle of deepening intimacy that doesn't happen in ordinary conversation.

Mutual vulnerability: Vulnerability, when met with attention rather than judgment, creates the specific emotional experience of feeling safe with someone — which is the psychological core of intimacy and attachment.

The illusion of knowing: By the end of 45 minutes with these questions, most people feel they know this person significantly better than they actually do — because they know the most meaningful things, even if they don't yet know the mundane details. This depth-over-breadth knowing is powerfully bonding.

The sustained mutual gaze (Question 37): After completing the questions, participants were instructed to look into each other's eyes for 4 minutes without speaking. As covered in our eye contact guide, sustained mutual gaze triggers oxytocin release and significantly increases feelings of affection. This final instruction produced some of the study's most significant closeness effects.

Important Caveats

The questions create closeness, not necessarily romantic love. The study was explicitly about generating closeness — which overlaps with romantic love but is not identical to it. Participants in the study who were already in different relationships also experienced closeness. The intimacy created is real; whether it manifests as romantic love depends on context, attraction, and the specific people involved.

Closeness requires willing participants. The questions work when both people are genuinely engaged. Used on an unwilling or closed-off person, they produce discomfort rather than intimacy. The questions create conditions for closeness; they can't force it.

They are a starting structure, not a script. The most natural use is as a jumping-off point — some questions will lead to extended conversation that goes far beyond the prompt itself. Following those threads is more important than mechanically completing every question.

The Complete 37 Questions

Set 1: Moderate Vulnerability

  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?

Set 2: Greater Vulnerability

  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 3: High Vulnerability

  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 back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Question 37: The Mutual Gaze

After completing all 36 questions: look into each other's eyes silently for 4 minutes.

This instruction, which feels awkward to describe and profound to experience, produces one of the most significant closeness effects of the entire exercise. The silence after 45 minutes of deep sharing, combined with sustained mutual gaze, creates a quality of connection that most people have never experienced with a relative stranger.

How to Actually Use These

For a date:
Don't present them as "the 36 questions" — the meta-awareness can make the exercise feel clinical. Instead, introduce them as "I have some interesting questions — game to try some?" Most people respond well to this framing. You don't have to complete all 36 in one sitting; 12–15 of the most interesting ones spread across a long dinner can produce the same effect.

For an established relationship:
Skip to Set 2 and 3, which will cover territory more novel to a couple who already know each other's basic story. The mutual gaze instruction is particularly powerful for couples who have lost a quality of deep seeing in the daily routine of their relationship.

For a friendship:
The questions work equally well for deepening platonic closeness — the self-expansion model doesn't require romantic context.

For yourself (as solo reflection):
Reading through and genuinely sitting with your own answers to these questions is a profound self-knowledge exercise. Several of the prompts — particularly questions 13, 14, 19, 26, and 33 — surface things people rarely examine about themselves.

The Building Emotional Connection Principle

The deeper insight behind these questions is a principle that applies to every relationship: emotional closeness is built through progressive, reciprocal, mutual vulnerability — not through time alone.

Two people can spend years together without ever achieving the depth of connection that 45 minutes with these questions can initiate — because they've never created the conditions for genuine self-disclosure and genuine attention to what is shared.

The questions work because they force both conditions simultaneously. For more on the broader principles of building emotional connection, read our guide on the signs of deep emotional connection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do these questions actually make people fall in love?
The study found they create closeness, not necessarily romantic love. Romantic love requires attraction as a prerequisite; the questions then facilitate a quality of rapid closeness that can deepen existing attraction into something much more significant. They cannot create love from nothing.

Q: What if the conversation feels awkward or forced?
Some questions will produce more natural conversation than others. Skip questions that produce dead ends and follow the ones that open into genuine conversation. The structure is a scaffold, not a cage.

Q: Can these questions save a struggling relationship?
They can facilitate the kind of vulnerable sharing that struggling relationships often lack — and that vulnerability, met with genuine attention, is often what's needed. They're not a substitute for addressing specific relationship issues, but they can reopen emotional channels that have become blocked.

Q: Are these culturally universal?
The core mechanism (reciprocal vulnerability creating closeness) appears to be cross-cultural. Some specific questions may feel more or less natural depending on cultural norms around self-disclosure and emotional expression.

Q: Why 36 specifically?
The number isn't magic — it's the result of the research design (three sets of 12). Aron's original study tested several conditions; the 36-question format produced the most significant closeness effects. What matters is the structure (progressive escalation of vulnerability) rather than the specific count.

Conclusion

Arthur Aron's questions work because they replicate, in an hour, what usually takes months of carefully accumulated experience: the felt sense of being genuinely known and genuinely knowing someone.

The reason most relationships develop slowly is not because depth requires time — it's because depth requires conditions (vulnerability, attention, reciprocity) that ordinary social interaction rarely creates.

These questions create those conditions on purpose.

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References: Aron A, et al. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. | Catron ML. (2015). To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This. New York Times. | Aron A, Aron EN. (1986). Love and the Expansion of Self: Understanding Attraction and Satisfaction.