Strangers in Love

We’re all wired to experience love, but what is love, really? We often ask ourselves this question for 1 of 2 reasons: either we’re unsure whether or not a certain special person really ‘loves’ us; or because someone has just accused us of not loving them. Although love is explored in countless romantic poems, sonnets, songs, stories etc., a well-agreed upon definition of ‘love’ is pretty hard to track down.
For some love might mean a deep connection between 2 people, or maybe warmth that you get from knowing that a special someone is with you. Some people associate love with sexual arousal and for some, love can be broken down into discrete neurochemical processes.
For many of us, love seems shrouded in mystery. It seems uncontrollable. But it can be controlled. Back in the late 90s, a group of American researchers changed everything. Their goal was essentially to create a feeling of closeness between 2 strangers. Their experiment (link is external) was a resounding success.
But how did they do it?
Well, it was quite simple really. They basically just got strangers to talk to each other. Specifically, they talked to each other for 45 minutes taking turns asking and answering questions. But they had to be the right questions.
Several years earlier the research group had conducted similar research and one of the cross-sex pairs actually fell in love and married!
This time they had to make the procedure shorter, and appropriate for university students. Because they did this at a university where, as is typical of university samples, 70% of participants were female, the experimenters used both cross-sex and female-female pairings.
The strangers sat facing each other and asked a series of 36 increasingly intimate questions. These were broken into 3 sets.
After all was said and done, each participant how close they felt to their conversation partner. The procedure made a huge impact. This was true for cross-sex AND female-female pairs!
Compared to idle small talk the escalating intimacy questions used by the researchers led to far greater feelings of closeness and attraction.
This may just be the kind of accelerated intimacy that our chaotic 9-day working week fast-food fast-love society could benefit from. Don’t get me wrong, awkward conversation and fumbling attempts at humor have their place, and are even kind of cute, but who has time? I’m not saying that the researchers here have figured out how to artificially manufacture love, but I’m not say they haven’t.
We’re all wired to experience love, but what is love, really? We often ask ourselves this question for 1 of 2 reasons: either we’re unsure whether or not a certain special person really ‘loves’ us; or because someone has just accused us of not loving them. Although love is explored in countless romantic poems, sonnets, songs, stories etc., a well-agreed upon definition of ‘love’ is pretty hard to track down.
For some love might mean a deep connection between 2 people, or maybe warmth that you get from knowing that a special someone is with you. Some people associate love with sexual arousal and for some, love can be broken down into discrete neurochemical processes.
For many of us, love seems shrouded in mystery. It seems uncontrollable. But it can be controlled. Back in the late 90s, a group of American researchers changed everything. Their goal was essentially to create a feeling of closeness between 2 strangers. Their experiment (link is external) was a resounding success.
But how did they do it?
Well, it was quite simple really. They basically just got strangers to talk to each other. Specifically, they talked to each other for 45 minutes taking turns asking and answering questions. But they had to be the right questions.
Several years earlier the research group had conducted similar research and one of the cross-sex pairs actually fell in love and married!
This time they had to make the procedure shorter, and appropriate for university students. Because they did this at a university where, as is typical of university samples, 70% of participants were female, the experimenters used both cross-sex and female-female pairings.
The strangers sat facing each other and asked a series of 36 increasingly intimate questions. These were broken into 3 sets.

After all was said and done, each participant how close they felt to their conversation partner. The procedure made a huge impact. This was true for cross-sex AND female-female pairs!
Compared to idle small talk the escalating intimacy questions used by the researchers led to far greater feelings of closeness and attraction.
This may just be the kind of accelerated intimacy that our chaotic 9-day working week fast-food fast-love society could benefit from. Don’t get me wrong, awkward conversation and fumbling attempts at humor have their place, and are even kind of cute, but who has time? I’m not saying that the researchers here have figured out how to artificially manufacture love, but I’m not say they haven’t.
We’re all wired to experience love, but what is love, really? We often ask ourselves this question for 1 of 2 reasons: either we’re unsure whether or not a certain special person really ‘loves’ us; or because someone has just accused us of not loving them. Although love is explored in countless romantic poems, sonnets, songs, stories etc., a well-agreed upon definition of ‘love’ is pretty hard to track down.
For some love might mean a deep connection between 2 people, or maybe warmth that you get from knowing that a special someone is with you. Some people associate love with sexual arousal and for some, love can be broken down into discrete neurochemical processes.
For many of us, love seems shrouded in mystery. It seems uncontrollable. But it can be controlled. Back in the late 90s, a group of American researchers changed everything. Their goal was essentially to create a feeling of closeness between 2 strangers. Their experiment (link is external) was a resounding success.
But how did they do it?
Well, it was quite simple really. They basically just got strangers to talk to each other. Specifically, they talked to each other for 45 minutes taking turns asking and answering questions. But they had to be the right questions.
Several years earlier the research group had conducted similar research and one of the cross-sex pairs actually fell in love and married!
This time they had to make the procedure shorter, and appropriate for university students. Because they did this at a university where, as is typical of university samples, 70% of participants were female, the experimenters used both cross-sex and female-female pairings.
The strangers sat facing each other and asked a series of 36 increasingly intimate questions. These were broken into 3 sets.
After all was said and done, each participant how close they felt to their conversation partner. The procedure made a huge impact. This was true for cross-sex AND female-female pairs!
Compared to idle small talk the escalating intimacy questions used by the researchers led to far greater feelings of closeness and attraction.
This may just be the kind of accelerated intimacy that our chaotic 9-day working week fast-food fast-love society could benefit from. Don’t get me wrong, awkward conversation and fumbling attempts at humor have their place, and are even kind of cute, but who has time? I’m not saying that the researchers here have figured out how to artificially manufacture love, but I’m not say they haven’t.