In the late 1990s, psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues developed a simple experiment to see whether intimacy could be created through conversation. They brought college students into the lab, paired them up with people they did not know, and asked them to take turns answering a series of 36 questions that became increasingly personal, followed by four minutes of sustained eye contact. The goal was to understand whether it was possible to use self-disclosure as a tool for building intimacy between strangers.

In 2015, Mandy Len Catron wrote a Modern Love essay for The New York Times titled To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This. In it, she described going on a first date and asking him to complete the 36 questions task with her. At the end of the essay, she revealed that they fell in love that night. It went viral, launching widespread public interest in the 36 questions. Many readers don’t realize that the questions from the essay were from Aron’s study above,........

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