Is it possible to make yourself fall in love?
Fairytale movies lead us to believe that love is something that happens to us. We are all just walking around waiting to bump into the love of our lives and live happily ever after. Studies, such as those by Arthur Aaron, have shown that love is, to a certain extent, under our control. In his lab, he believed he could actually increase the intimacy between people and potentially lead them to fall in love.
The study involved complete strangers coming into the lab and being paired up. The participants were asked to answer 36 questions, which got increasingly personal. The questions start out very light, with questions such as “would you like to be famous?” and slowly start getting deeper and deeper until you start arriving at questions such as “what is your relationship like with your mother?” The later questions are topics you would not generally choose to discuss with a total stranger so they are designed to give you a sense of closeness/openness with the person. The study used a control group of pairs who got questions that did not get increasingly more personal — basically they just small talked.
The next task is the seemingly awkward one. The researchers turn on the timer and the pair are to just stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes. To me, this seems like it would be rather uncomfortable but, apparently, it is rather exhilarating!
Post-interaction, the researcher gave psychological tests to assess the individual’s levels of intimacy. Such tests included the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale and the Subjective Closeness Index (SCI). These psychological tests were necessary in order to be able to compare the levels of intimacy between the pairs that had deep conversations versus light conversations.
Those who engaged in deep conversation did feel significantly closer than those that didn’t. You might be finding yourself a little skeptical… does this really work? Well, judging by how two people who met in the study actually went on to get married and invite the entire lab to the wedding, I’d say there is reason to suspect there might really be something to this theory.
This article was inspired by this YouTube video which was basically a reenactment of the study. They did a really good job, check it out if you are interested!
