Psychologist Arthur Aron’s 36 questions can build deep connection between two people in under an hour. Here’s how the science works and why it applies to more than just romance.
How a psychology experiment from the 1990s became one of the most powerful relationship tools we have
Imagine sitting across from someone you barely know. You’re in a bar, a classroom, or maybe a living room. Over the next 45 minutes, you’ll ask each other questions that get progressively more personal. By the end, you’ll feel closer to this person than friends you’ve known for years.
That’s the promise behind a set of 36 questions developed by psychologist Arthur Aron and his research team in the 1990s. And the science backs it up.
Mandy Len Catron put the method to the test in 2014. She described the experience in a New York Times essay that went viral. She sat in a bar with a university acquaintance, passed her phone back and forth, and worked through all 36 questions over two hours. The conversation started light (“Would you like to be famous?”) and ended with the kind of raw honesty most people avoid for months, even years.
Within weeks, they’d developed strong feelings for each other. They moved in together the following year. They had children in 2021 and 2025. More than ten years after that first date, they got married.
The 36 questions sat in a bowl at the bar during their wedding reception.
The science behind the questions
The original experiment wasn’t designed to create romantic love. Aron and his colleagues needed a shortcut. They wanted a reliable way to build closeness between strangers in a lab setting, so they created what they called the “fast friends” procedure.
The setup is simple. Two strangers sit facing each other and take turns asking and answering 36 questions, divided into three sets. Each set gets more personal than the last.
Set one asks you to describe your perfect day. Set three asks whose death would disturb you most.
The mechanism driving the whole thing is what researchers call “reciprocal self-disclosure.” One person shares something personal. That openness signals trust, which motivates the other person to match it. Back and forth, layer by layer, two people build a connection that normally takes weeks or months to develop.
Think of it this way: if I tell you I’ve struggled with my mental health, I’m signaling that I trust you enough to be honest. That makes it safer for you to share something equally personal about yourself. Trust grows. The gap between you shrinks.
What the research shows
In Aron’s studies, participants who completed the fast friends procedure felt significantly closer to each other than those who simply made small talk (the control group also answered 36 questions, but none of them got personal).
A 2021 study pushed this further. Participants in the fast friends group didn’t just feel closer. They liked their conversation partner more, found them more approachable, enjoyed the experience more, and had more fun. All of this from a 45-minute conversation with a stranger.
Aron and his colleagues were careful to note that the procedure doesn’t create every ingredient love requires. It doesn’t generate loyalty, commitment or dependence. It doesn’t automatically produce passion, romance or physical attraction. And it doesn’t build the kind of respect that only develops over time.
What it does create is trust and intimacy, the foundation everything else is built on.
As Catron put it:
“Love didn’t happen to us. We’re in love because we each made the choice to be.”
The questions work beyond romance
The 36 questions get a lot of attention around Valentine’s Day, but their applications stretch far beyond dating.
Existing couples get a refresher. When established partners complete the exercise together with another couple they haven’t met, something unexpected happens. They report feeling closer to the new couple, yes, but they also report feeling more passionate toward their own partner. The exercise seems to reignite something.
Parents and children connect differently. A research team adapted the questions for kids aged eight to thirteen. When parents and children took turns asking and answering, the children finished the exercise feeling more loved. That’s a big deal for a 45-minute activity.
Classrooms and workplaces benefit. In educational settings, the exercise works as both an icebreaker and a genuine relationship builder. There’s evidence that closeness-building tasks among team members can increase both productivity and creativity.
Prejudice decreases. In a 2015 study, heterosexual participants completed the fast friends exercise with a stranger who disclosed they were gay. After the exercise, participants reported stronger feelings of closeness and fewer sexual prejudices than before. Other research suggests the method may also reduce racism and age-based discrimination.
Why it feels different from normal conversation
Most of us walk around with a rehearsed version of ourselves. We have the stories we tell at parties, the answers we give when someone asks how we’re doing. The 36 questions make it impossible to rely on that script.
The questions start easy enough. “When did you last sing to yourself?” is hardly threatening. But by question 28 (“Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things you might not say to someone you’ve just met”), you’re in territory most people avoid entirely.
Catron compared it to the old boiling frog metaphor. The vulnerability increases so gradually that you don’t realize you’ve entered intimate territory until you’re already there.
That gradual escalation is the genius of the design. If someone asked you to share your most terrible memory within the first five minutes, you’d shut down. But after twenty minutes of building trust through smaller disclosures, it feels natural. Even welcome.
The eye contact
After the 36 questions, there’s one more step: four minutes of unbroken eye contact.
Catron described it as one of the most thrilling and terrifying experiences of her life, and she’s someone who has skied steep slopes and hung from rock faces. She spent the first couple of minutes just trying to breathe normally.
But something shifted. Once the initial terror subsided, she found herself in a state of wonder. Not just because she was truly seeing someone, but because she was seeing someone truly seeing her.
Two minutes is enough to feel uncomfortable. Four minutes, according to Catron, “really goes somewhere.”
The 36 questions
Here’s the full list, divided into three sets. Each set is meant to go deeper than the last. Take turns asking and answering. Don’t rush.
Set 1: Breaking the ice
- Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
- Would you like to be famous? In what way?
- Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you’re going to say? Why?
- What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
- When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
- If you could live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years, which would you choose?
- Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
- Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
- For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
- If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
- Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
- If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Set 2: Opening up
- If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
- Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
- What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
- What do you value most in a friendship?
- What is your most treasured memory?
- What is your most terrible memory?
- If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you’re now living? Why?
- What does friendship mean to you?
- What roles do love and affection play in your life?
- Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
- How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
- How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Set 3: Letting your guard down
- Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling…”
- Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share…”
- If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
- Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
- Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
- When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
- Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
- What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
- 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?
- 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?
- Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
- 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.
How to get the most out of this exercise
A few things that will help:
Slutresultatet
The 36 questions work because they challenge an assumption most of us carry: that deep connection is something that happens to us, slowly and mysteriously, outside our control.
Aron’s research suggests something different. Trust and intimacy can be built deliberately. Not manufactured or faked, but actively created through the choice to be open with another person.
That doesn’t mean 36 questions will make you fall in love with a stranger. They probably won’t. But they will give you and another person a shared space of honesty that most relationships take months to reach. What you do with that space is up to you.
And that might be the most useful takeaway: connection isn’t something you wait for. It’s something you build.
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