Can you make someone fall in love with you?
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Do the 36 questions really make strangers fall in love?
For what in your life do you feel most great? You could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? With your partner an embarrassing moment in your life. Do you last cry in front of another person or by yourself? Oh my god. That was really hot.
How do you feel asking those questions to someone you've never met before? Well, those four questions and 32 more intensely vulnerable others have been trending for over 20 years now as a scientific formula to falling in love. So it got us thinking, do they work? And can you really ever make someone fall in love with you? Nat Tenchich here, and in this episode of The Hookup, we put that famous experiment to the test and find out the real secret to falling in love. Now, I'd actually never heard of the 36 questions before, so don't worry if you haven't either. Basically, in the 90s, psychologist Arthur Aaron created an experiment and succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. And now they're on offer as cards, online, and at, well, matchmaking events.
Sarah Russ is a matchmaker and runs events all over Australia. getting strangers to do the 36 questions. Here's how it all goes down.
So the night begins with a lock and key game which encourages people to mix and mingle. Then for one hour of the night predetermined matches sit with each other and they uh play a sharing game using the famous thirty six questions.
So tell me about how you came across the thirty six questions. Yeah. I didn't really know about this until you got in touch, but actually it's a thing.
Yeah, so I was actually um looking at a social group in Adelaide and what they had been doing for their singles and They had this evening where they use the thirty-six questions and when I looked further into the thirty-six questions, the geeky scientist in me was like, This is amazing. Like there's actually kind of like this formula for creating connection and it can be like a connection can be achieved in an hour. And so I thought, well, I'll trial this with my singles and they loved it.
Tell me about some of the questions. Like how does the how does the whole thing run and and work?
Yeah. So at the beginning the questions started off really easy, like yeah, if you could invite anyone for dinner, who would it be? So it's really easy and you know, you don't have to be ver vulnerable to answer a question like that. Uh and but then over time the questions become a little bit more deep and encourage people to become a little bit more vulnerable, thus creating more connection.
So you had an event on Thursday night, uh the third offline Valentine. Correct?
Yes.
Tell me about how it went, uh how many people did end up falling in love with each other.
Yeah, so it's a little bit too early to know how many people fell in love, but everyone said, well pretty much everyone said, except for maybe one person, that their level of connection went from about a three to about a seven. Uh and I got a little bit nerdy and I got them to fill out an assessment before and after the thirty six questions. That's a scientist coming outing me. And um yeah, and then about fifty percent of the females who participated in this experiment said that they would like to have a second date with the person that they they matched with. And I think it was about eighty percent of the males. So I don't know whether females are just a little bit more picky
or have you run like I mean, just in the interest of science, have you run like an event where you don't do the thirty-six questions and then polled everyone how they feel?
So I do need a control. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm I've also studied to be a teacher, so I'm quite into like doing this whole assessment before and after, right? So um I do regular social events around Melbourne and with those events uh there's uh some questions or like a poll that I get people to do to find out how connected they feel at the beginning when they're meeting a whole bunch of strangers, then we play some icebreakers and just have general chit chat and then at the end of the hour
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Do the 36 questions really make strangers fall in love?
0:00–5:19
2
How was the 36‑question love experiment originally created?
5:19–7:53
3
What does a typical 36‑questions matchmaking event look like?
7:53–10:59
4
Did participants feel a stronger connection after the questions?
10:59–14:15
5
How does the four‑minute eye‑contact exercise affect intimacy?
14:15–17:52
6
Can the 36 questions work on a real first date?
17:52–22:20
7
Did the participants end up falling in love or just becoming friends?
22:20–28:08
8
What core traits of a partner are people actually looking for?
28:08–32:43