Scientific Matchmaking is Possible?

Now the basis of a smartphone app, a study by Aron and others (1996) showed that it is possible to induce feelings of closeness in an experimental context. The authors created standardized question sets for cross-sex dyads to complete, then asked them to independently rate feelings of closeness and affinity toward the other person. Consistent with previous research demonstrating self-disclosure as an important factor in relationships, the question sets were designed to elicit more and more self-disclosure. They matched participants for attachment styles and manipulated several variables, namely the nature of the tasks (the question sets or equivalent small-talk tasks), agreement on important issues, expectations of mutual liking, and whether closeness was an explicit goal.

The authors found that their procedure induced closeness regardless of the three other variables. According to hearsay, there was a wedding involved. Recently, the study (or at least vague summaries of it) became popularized as “the 37 questions to make you fall in love”. The procedure was supposed to induce short-term closeness during the interaction, and long-term effects were unintended. So have the authors cracked the love code? Probably not. Although the variables they manipulated may not have produced salient effects, other factors that are impossible or difficult to manipulate may have. To name a few, subjects who participated were probably more willing to get close to their partner; subjects were consciously trying to be harmonious and likeable; the matching of attachment styles accounted for the effects.

The part about the wedding is dubious. But suspend your disbelief and assume it is true. How did that marriage turn out? Perhaps it was lasting and loving, and perhaps it was neither of those things. There is more to love than initial attraction. And the procedure cannot guarantee beyond that. However, this is not to say that it has no value. A reminder that the authors intended the procedure to produce short-term feelings of closeness is warranted at this point. The procedure undermines the notion of love as this mystical elusive entity that people cannot grasp. It demonstrates that closeness is something to be forged and developed; that compatibility is, at least in part, fostered; that spending hours on Tinder swiping left and right will more often than not get you nowhere.

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