Short answer: they work, and they don’t do what you think they do.
The questions to fall in love that everyone has seen on a listicle come from a 1997 psychology paper, and that paper never used the word love in its title, its hypothesis, or its findings. It was called “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness,” and closeness is a different thing.
Here’s what the study did, what it found, and why the version you’ve seen online has almost nothing to do with either.
What Was the Original 36 Questions to Fall in Love Study?
Arthur Aron and his colleagues at Stony Brook put two strangers in a room, gave them a list of questions, and had them take turns asking and answering for about 45 minutes. The questions came in three sets of twelve, each one escalating past the last. Set one was warm-up material. Set two got personal. Set three went somewhere uncomfortable. A control group made small talk for the same amount of time. A recap of the original experiment covers the design in full.
Afterward everyone rated how close they felt to the person across the table, and the question group scored dramatically higher than the small-talk group. Some of them rated a total stranger as closer than the average person rates their closest relationship in life.
Forty-five minutes. Two people who’d never met.
Did the 36 Questions Study Prove People Fall in Love?
Nobody fell in love in the lab. That was never the outcome being measured.
The famous detail that made the whole thing go viral came later, and it’s an anecdote rather than a finding. Two participants got married six months after taking part, and they invited the whole lab to the ceremony. One couple, out of a study that ran dozens of pairs. That’s a nice story and it isn’t data.
The study measured whether you can manufacture closeness on purpose in under an hour. The answer was yes. Whether closeness turns into love depends on everything the experiment couldn’t control, which is most of life.
Why the 36 Questions Became Known as Questions to Fall in Love
In January 2015 the New York Times published a Modern Love essay by Mandy Len Catron called “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.” She and an acquaintance went for a beer, worked through all 36 questions, and she ended up falling in love with him. They also finished with four minutes of eye contact, which is a separate piece of the procedure people usually skip.
The essay became one of the paper’s most-read pieces of the year. That’s where the phrase “36 questions to fall in love” entered the language, and it’s been reprinted, repackaged, and turned into apps and card decks ever since.
Catron’s essay is careful about this in a way the copies aren’t. Her point was that the questions created the conditions, not the outcome.
Do the 36 Questions to Fall in Love Actually Work?
Yes, for the thing they were built to do.
The mechanism the researchers identified is sustained, escalating, reciprocal self-disclosure. Break that into parts and each one does work:
Sustained means you keep going past the point where you’d normally change the subject.
Escalating means each question asks a little more than the last, so nobody has to make the jump from weather to childhood in one move.
Reciprocal means you both answer. This is the part people skip, and skipping it turns the whole thing into an interview.
None of that requires a specific list of 36. The list is a delivery mechanism for the structure, and the structure is what does the lifting. Which is why the same procedure has been used in research on closeness itself, not just on strangers falling for each other, including studies on roommates and cross-group contact.
Common Mistakes People Make With the 36 Questions to Fall in Love
They do it as a stunt. Pulling out your phone on a first date and announcing you’re running an experiment puts the other person on a stage. Performance is the opposite of disclosure.
They rush the early questions. Set one looks like filler. It isn’t. It’s the ramp, and if you sprint through it to get to the good stuff, the good stuff lands on someone who isn’t warmed up.
One person carries it. If you’re asking and they’re answering, you’ve built an asymmetry, and asymmetry kills closeness rather than creating it. The whole design depends on both people going in. The same asymmetry problem shows up in deep questions between friends, where one-sided asking reads as an interview instead of a conversation.
They expect a feeling by the end. Forty-five minutes of honest conversation with someone will not necessarily produce a feeling you can name that night. It’ll produce information about a person, and information is what closeness is made of.
They only do it once. The study was a single session because it was a study. Your relationship is not a single session.
nosy’s 36 Questions to Fall in Love
The original 36 exist in the paper and in the New York Times, and you can find them in about four seconds. So instead of retyping them, here’s a set built on the same structure for people who already know each other, since that’s most of us and the original was designed for strangers. If you want a lighter set to warm up with first, our list of random questions to ask friends works as a Set Zero.
Take turns. Answer before you ask the next one. Do a set at a time rather than all three in one sitting.
Set One
- What's something you looked forward to this week that nobody knew about?
- What did you assume about me when we met?
- What's a small thing that reliably fixes your mood?
- If you had a free Tuesday with no obligations, what would happen to it?
- What's a compliment you got once that you still think about?
- What do you do when you're alone that you'd never do around anyone?
- What's the last thing you were surprised to enjoy?
- What do people get wrong about your job?
- What were you like at seventeen?
- What's something you own that you'd grab in a fire?
- What's a habit you picked up from someone you love?
- What's the best day you've had in the last year?
Set Two
- What's the thing you're most afraid of losing?
- When did you last feel proud of yourself, and did you tell anyone?
- What's a decision you're still not sure about?
- What do you think your family would say is your defining trait, and are they right?
- What's something you've never been able to explain to anyone properly?
- What's the loneliest you've ever been?
- What do you need from people that you've never asked for?
- What's a version of your life you think about that didn't happen?
- What are you avoiding right now?
- What's the hardest thing you've forgiven someone for?
- What do you want more of, and what's in the way?
- What would you want said about you by someone who knew you well?
Set Three
- What's the thing you'd want me to understand about you that I probably don't?
- When have I let you down without knowing it?
- What's something you've wanted to tell me and haven't?
- What do you think I'm wrong about?
- When did you last cry, and what was it about?
- What do you worry about at three in the morning?
- What's the closest you've come to giving up on something that mattered to you?
- What do you think happens when this is over, whatever this is?
- What would you regret not saying?
- What's a thing about yourself you've stopped trying to change?
- What do you want the next five years to look like, honestly?
- What's changed between us since we met?
Then, if you want the full protocol, four minutes of eye contact. Catron’s line about it is that two minutes is enough to be terrified and four goes somewhere.
Frequently Asked Questions About the 36 Questions to Fall in Love
Do the 36 Questions Make You Fall in Love?
No, and the study never claimed they did. The research measured closeness between strangers, and the question group reported significantly more of it than a small-talk control group. One pair from the original experiment later married, which is an anecdote rather than a result.
Who Wrote the 36 Questions to Fall in Love?
Arthur Aron and colleagues developed them for a 1997 paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. They reached a wide audience through a 2015 New York Times Modern Love essay by Mandy Len Catron.
How Long Do the 36 Questions Take?
The original lab procedure ran about 45 minutes, split evenly across three sets of twelve. Most people doing it outside a lab take longer, often ninety minutes or more, because nobody is enforcing the clock.
Can You Do the 36 Questions With a Friend or Family Member?
Yes, and the underlying procedure has been used in research well outside of romance. The design assumes two people who don’t know each other, so with someone you already know, the early questions land as filler and the later ones do most of the work.
What Is the Eye Contact Part For?
Four minutes of sustained mutual gaze is a separate technique that predates the question procedure, and Catron included it in her account. It’s the part almost everyone skips, and it’s also the part people report as the most affecting.
Sources
- Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377.
- Catron, M. L. (2015). To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This. The New York Times, Modern Love.
- Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596-612.
Why the 36 Questions to Fall in Love Aren’t Enough on Their Own
One session builds closeness. Keeping it is a different problem, and it’s the one the research design had no way to look at.
That’s the job nosy does. A few questions go out to your circle each week, everyone answers on their own time, and the answers open together on Sunday. It’s the 45 minutes, repeated, without anyone having to schedule it.