When 6 Couples Looked Into Each Other's Eyes For 4 Minutes, The Unexpected Happened
One wonderful result!
By Sadho Ram — 23 Feb 2015, 05:49 PM — Updated almost 10 years ago
According to a study by the psychologist Arthur Aron, intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated by having them engage in an uninterrupted eye contact for 4 straight minutes
Back in January, Mandy Len Catron, a New York Times writer recreated Dr. Aron's study, which also involves a set of 36 questions, narrating how she applied the technique in her own life. The idea is that feeling vulnerable can cultivate closeness.
In Mandy Len Catron’s Modern Love essay, she refers to a study by the psychologist Arthur Aron (and others) that explores whether intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated by having them ask each other a specific series of personal questions. The 36 questions in the study are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one.
The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.” Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.
nytimes.com
Inspired by the NYT article, YouTuber SoulPancake assembled six couples to recreate the eye contact part and test this theory
Among the couples they assembled were a pair of strangers, a couple on their fourth date and a couple married for 55 years
Each couple was put into a room on their own, and for 4 minutes, were tasked with sitting in silence while gazing into each other's eyes. During the experiment, after some uncomfortable fidgeting, their unease started to melt away.
At the end of the test, they seemed surprised by the results, even the married couple who'd been together for 55 years
"When I look at you really closely, I realise how much I need you and what you mean to me, because that's the truth," her husband later says to her. "I couldn't imagine being with anybody else."