(This was originally posted in my CHAI lab notes, and Daniel Filan suggested I write this up on LW. It’s basically not relevant to anything else I post about.)
And in the 1997 study with the 36 questions, there was a 0.8 d effect (mean intimacy rating from 3.3 → 4.1 out of 7), though that’s not really “falling in love” on average.
I feel like the questions actually aren’t that different between the 1991 and 1997 studies, though the order is pretty off and the “what is sexy” and role play being in love questions are removed.
The main differences seems to be:
The 1997 study had 45 minutes of interaction, as opposed to 1.5 hours; if there was a lower effect size I think it’s probably due to this as opposed to the actual questions being different. For one, I’m not convinced the people actually finished even half of the questions in 45 minutes! (It took the NYT writer 2 hours to finish.)
There’s no staring into the eyes in the 1997 study (though there was 3 minutes in the 1991 study). Note that the NYT article does feature 4 minutes of staring.
P.S: I think the new 36 question order is actually better, since there’s a natural build up from less to more intimate, while in the OG 40 questions it’s basically just random.
That being said, the NYT piece does misrepresent the 1991 vs the 1997 study, e.g. they do the 36 questions from 1997 but then use the 1991 study’s marriage as the framing device:
A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. They sit face to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to the ceremony.
(This was originally posted in my CHAI lab notes, and Daniel Filan suggested I write this up on LW. It’s basically not relevant to anything else I post about.)
So, there’s this set of questions called “36 questions to fall in love” by the NYT, which originates from the 1997 paper “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness” by Aron et al.
I recently saw a tweet thread that claimed it was kind of bs, because the original 1991 study that actually lead to a marriage and a few relationships used a 1.5 hour procedure that had a slightly different set of 40 questions, including “play act as if you’re falling in love”:
https://twitter.com/IvanVendrov/status/1611809666266435584
Notably, the line
seems quite misleading.
The NYT’s main evidence that it leads people to fall in love is one of their reporters trying it, and falling in love with the person she tried it with: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/style/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html
And in the 1997 study with the 36 questions, there was a 0.8 d effect (mean intimacy rating from 3.3 → 4.1 out of 7), though that’s not really “falling in love” on average.
I feel like the questions actually aren’t that different between the 1991 and 1997 studies, though the order is pretty off and the “what is sexy” and role play being in love questions are removed.
The main differences seems to be:
The 1997 study had 45 minutes of interaction, as opposed to 1.5 hours; if there was a lower effect size I think it’s probably due to this as opposed to the actual questions being different. For one, I’m not convinced the people actually finished even half of the questions in 45 minutes! (It took the NYT writer 2 hours to finish.)
There’s no staring into the eyes in the 1997 study (though there was 3 minutes in the 1991 study). Note that the NYT article does feature 4 minutes of staring.
P.S: I think the new 36 question order is actually better, since there’s a natural build up from less to more intimate, while in the OG 40 questions it’s basically just random.
That being said, the NYT piece does misrepresent the 1991 vs the 1997 study, e.g. they do the 36 questions from 1997 but then use the 1991 study’s marriage as the framing device: