Can you make someone become intimately close to you - even fall in love with you - in less than an hour? Just ask Arthur Aron.
Dr Aron - known to friends as Art - runs the Interpersonal Relationships Lab at Stony Brook University in upstate New York, and he has love on his mind. Passionate love, unreciprocated love, romantic attraction, unexpected arousal, pure lust - these are all aspects of human intimacy that fascinate this much published psychology professor, specialising in what causes people to fall in and out of love and form other deep relationships ("the self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in personal relationships", as his CV puts it). He has built his reputation on papers with titles such as The Neural Basis of Long-term Romantic Love, Motivations for Unreciprocated Love and A Prototype of Relationship Boredom. But such dry academic language belies the shockingly powerful nature of some of his team's lab work.
In 1997, Dr Aron and colleagues published a paper in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness". They wanted to know if they could create lab conditions that would make strangers quickly bond and form close friendships, even romantic engagements, after just a few minutes.
They arranged volunteers in pairs, and gave them a list of 36 questions that, one by one, they were both asked to answer openly over an hour in a kind of sharing game. Even before the hour was up, respondents typically said they felt unusually close to the person they had shared questions with.
But would the 'fast friends' experiment also work with more worldly senior executives and entrepreneurs? Ever since I discovered the experiment three years ago, I have been looking for an opportunity to put it into practice among a group of curious and openminded strangers.
I found my opportunity at a recent conference in Athens held by WPP, the marketing multinational headed by Sir Martin Sorrell - or, rather, WPP’S 'unconference', where the programme is created on the hoof entirely by the participants. Get together 400 top creatives, business founders, investors and makers - the thinking goes - and the resulting idea-sharing will not only be a ton of fun, but will also benefit WPP by keeping its employees and clients impeccably informed. The formula works beautifully - talents such as entrepreneur Esther Dyson, advertising chief Rory Sutherland and the team behind the Vice media empire ran sessions on topics ranging from personal data-tracking and the future of the book to the secrets of lucid dreaming.
"Take part in a psychological experiment, and make friends fast," I scribbled on the whiteboard where session hosts competed for delegates' attention. The brave 18 people curious enough to show up discovered that this was no false advertising: the experiment really did promote incredibly fast bonding.
Like Aron, I paired the high-achieving entrepreneurs, investors, editors and executives to answer 36 questions. And like Aron's participants, mine were told that their task, which sounded fun, was "simply to get close to your partner" over an hour. They were given the questions, printed out in order, and told that both partners should answer each of them in turn.
The questions began simply enough: Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest? Would you like to be famous? In what way? Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? What would constitute a 'perfect' day for you? When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else? If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want? Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common. For what in your life do you feel most grateful? Gradually, the questions became more probing and personal: If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know? Is there something that you've dreamt of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it? What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
Finally, as the hour approached, the questions pressed the pair on their deeper life values: What do you value most in a friendship? What is your most treasured memory? What is your most terrible memory? If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why? What does friendship mean to you? What roles do love and affection play in your life? If you could choose the sex and appearance of your soon-to-beborn child, would you do it?
Alternate sharing: something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s? How do you feel about your relationship with your mother? Make three true 'we' statements each. For instance, 'We are both in this room feeling ' Complete this sentence: 'I wish I had someone with whom I could share 'If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know. Tell your partner what you like about them; be honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? Tell your partner something that you like about them already. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why? Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find the most disturbing? Why? Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
I also used a few deliciously probing variants on the original questions, including these from a similar study: If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon-to-be-born child, would you do it? Would you be willing to have horrible nightmares for a year if you would be rewarded with extraordinary wealth? While on a trip to another city, your spouse (or lover) meets and spends a night with an exciting stranger. Given they will never meet again, and you will not otherwise learn of the incident, would you want your partner to tell you about it?
In the original experiment, researchers created a control group where questions were based around small talk - far less emotionally probing questions such as: What gifts did you receive last Christmas/Hanukkah? What foreign country would you most like to visit? What attracts you to this place?
In the original 1997 'fast friends' experiment, even before the hour was up, participants in the main group typically identified strong feelings of closeness with their partner, often exchanging contact details and indicating a wish to meet up again. This was far more pronounced than among members of the control group that paired up to engage in small talk.
Lo and behold, most participants in my Stream study reported experiencing an intense feeling of having bonded with their experiment partner within 45 minutes. "We certainly became very close in an extremely short period of time," one participant said. Another said with surprise that she had revealed things that not even her boyfriend knew. Some pairs of new friends were still talking two hours later.
"I'm glad it worked so well, and I was happy to hear the procedure has been applied in such a real-world setting," Arthur Aron said when I shared the results with him. "The effect is based not just on reciprocal selfdisclosure, but on gradually escalating reciprocal self-disclosure."
In the original experiment, he said, "We also tested an intense version of this with cross-sex couples - and the first ones we tested fell in love and got married. And as of last year, when I last had contact with them, they were still together."
The study also produces similar results when pairs are of different races and people in professional groups you might think would struggle to find much in common, he said. "We've used the method with cross-race groups, and other cross-group pairs like community members and police, with great effects - not just at creating closeness within each pair, but that closeness extending to more positive attitudes towards the partner's group as a whole."
The original 1997 paper pondered what was happening. "So are we producing real closeness? Yes and no," the authors wrote. "We think that the closeness produced in these studies is experienced as similar in many important ways to felt closeness in naturally occurring relationships that develop over time." "On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the procedure produces loyalty, dependence, commitment or other relationship aspects that might take longer to develop."
Guess I'll have to catch up with my research group in a few months to see how their relationships have developed. My unscientific preliminary conclusion: gradually escalating reciprocal self-disclosure, under conditions that frame personal vulnerability as a social norm, can have dangerous consequences. But as a way to friend a stranger, it leaves Facebook trailing.
Pick Up Lines Around The World
The best chat-up lines in the world
With Valentine's Day just a week away and Britain's single men honing their (usually drunken) chat-up lines, Times foreign correspondents reveal how bachelors in other countries do it. We can learn something from them all - except, perhaps, Australia . . .
GERMANY
German men see the conquest of German women as an extreme sport, a physical activity that is up there with bungee jumping and paragliding. It boils down to three essentials: stamina, technique and the right kit. The charm thing doesn't really come into it, any more than it does with mountaineering. One chat-up line suggested by the much-visited German site Flirt-mit-mir (Flirt with me) is: "Your eyes are the same colour as my Porsche." Apparently this works quite well, even better than, "Do you want to see my gun collection?"
There is a growing awareness though that this might not be quite enough. The fact that Germany's most celebrated beauties are falling for foreigners (Claudia Schiffer for Matthew Vaughn, Heidi Klum for Seal) is beginning to be seen as a national problem. The columnist, Jochen Siemens, views German men as suffering from Caligynephobia (also known as Venustraphobia) - the fear of chatting up beautiful women. "The fact is that a beautiful woman undermines the illusion that one is leading a happy life," he says, "doubts begin to gnaw at us." And, since there is no chat-up line in the German language that can overcome this kind of brittle masculine self-confidence, the country is now brimming with flirt academies and seminars. Here, German men are taught supposedly romantic lines such as "Life is a big jigsaw puzzle - and you are the missing piece". And that it is not absolutely necessary to line up your mobile phones on the restaurant table, or casually drop your car keyring (with Jaguar symbol), or to flash photographs of your villa in Spain.
Surveys usually find that German women prefer men who listen to them. For all the obvious reasons this message has yet to be taken on board. But part of the problem, of course, is that German women cannot quite distil what they want from a man into a text-book formula. The journalists Stephan and Andreas Lebert recently interviewed women on this subject for their book Instruction on How to be Manly. One typical response: "A man shouldn't be a fretter, someone who is always asking how you are, or who is checking whether the yoghurt in the fridge has passed its sell-by-date. He should be able to show feelings and weaknesses, but not be a wimp, that's the worst, not a gossip, no, no, but he should have the gift of the gab, that's the most important, oh yes, and a sense of humour and, he should be, you know, a bit of a cowboy." That's it, then. Back to the classroom, Hans
UNITED STATES
Strategy, planning, opportunism, execution - all feature in the American heterosexual male's pursuit of the opposite sex. Take, for example, my American friend Jim's recent flight to Spain. On the plane was a conspicuously attractive Spanish attendant, who was receiving a great deal of attention from the Brits at the back. The Brits had calculated that if they ordered as much booze as possible from her, then with every repeat order, they would get more confidence and therefore another opportunity to charm her with their self-deprecation.
Jim had also taken a fancy to this stewardess. He was polite, he smiled, he made eye contact. He also made sure to get her name and repeat it often. And then, when the plane landed, he went straight to the newsagents' to buy an envelope, a pen, and some notepaper. At a nearby cafe he composed a letter to the airline congratulating it on its excellent cabin service - in particular the helpfulness and professionalism of a certain Spanish flight attendant, whom he named as a tribute to the values of the organisation. He included his name, number, and e-mail address, and posted the letter right there. Two weeks later the woman called him to say that his letter had earned her a bonus and that could she please go out for a drink with him next time she was flying through LA. "The idea just came to me, as soon as we landed," Jim explainsto me. "I didn't expect it to actually work."
Hogwash. American men know very well that this kind of thing works. The very fact that I have two American male friends who have successfully charmed flight attendants - a career that surely represents the most fortified beachhead of womankind's defence against unwanted romantic advances - suggests that it was no accident. In a culture where the drunk'n'lunge method most definitely doesn't work (although it has been known to happen), it's a necessity.
In terms of romantic pursuit, the American male is simply a more evolved creature than his British counterpart. It's been this way for a while: take the plot of Graham Greene's The Quiet American, in which the quiet American in question arrives in Vietnam and uses a letter-writing campaign to steal the girlfriend of the hero, a foreign correspondent for The Times. The key to the American strategy is deferred gratification: what my Dad still calls "courting" and what the Americans call "dating". Essentially, the American seduction comes in three stages: a conversation, a phone number, and then a date. Strategy, planning and execution.
As for opportunism - look no farther than Jim's letter to the airline.
ITALY
It's lunchtime at a high school (Liceo) in Rome's historic centre, and older pupils are milling about discussing plans for the evening. I ask one of the girls, Francesca, if Italian boys are shy about asking her out. She looks at me fairly witheringly. "Nowadays we do the asking," she says.
My friend Fabio agrees. "It's not so much that we have lost the art of seduction as Italian women become more feminist and independent. It's more economic. Italian men tend to be old fashioned and think they should pay for everything. But times are hard, and we sometimes hesitate to make a date because it means asking the girl to go halves, even for a film and a pizza, which is not very romantic. So they take the initiative."
Changes in the law have also had an effect: Italy has caught up with the concept of sexual harassment, with the result, Fabio says, that Italian men have discovered "there is a fine line between making advances and molestation. Making what you think is an innocent gesture can nowadays land you in trouble."
The same evening, Rome's youngsters are gathered on the cobbled piazza of Campo de' Fiori, still in groups, though some will pair off later. In Italian socialising there is often little need to break the ice: going to a disco, club or pub is a group activity involving school or university friends, the extended family, friends of friends. Singles bars are thin on the ground in Rome, and speed-dating never really took off. Nor is there much binge drinking compared with Britain: Campo de Fiori is lined with bars but the only people getting legless are foreigners.
In the end, though, someone has to make a play for his or her object of desire - and despite economic constraints and fear of harassment allegations, young Italian men can still cut it, according to Daniela, a blonde Alitalia stewardess. Italian men are pretty forthright. They don't hesitate to compliment you in the street on your beauty, ciao bella and all that. They even whistle." Does she mind? "Don't be silly."
What Italian men do not do, Daniela says, is drink to work up courage. Francesca agrees. "If they did it would be counterproductive," she says, looking appalled. "If a boy came up to me and asked me out smelling of drink, I would tell him he was schifoso (disgusting)." And that would be that? "And that would be that."
FRANCE
For younger Frenchmen, dalliance with the opposite sex is no longer the elegant dance of their fathers' days. A smile and a flash of wit used to go a long way, even between strangers in the street. "I used to prefer galleries and cafes," remembers Francois, a lawyer in his late fifties whose recent divorce has put him back on the market. "Women were playful. There was time. Now everyone is in a rush and they are suspicious and don't flirt with strangers. You have to meet at a dinner party, and even then it can be hard work."
Nicolas, 24, an accountant in Montreuil, Paris, says that he is quite successful with women but the old pickup places such as the street or disco no longer work. "The disco is absolutely out these days. Everyone is with their mates," he says. "I have joined a salsa dance class and that's great. It's a super plan de drague (pickup method)." As for the approach, Nicolas sticks to the age-old one. "I improvise depending on the girl's personality. There's no set line. The thing is to try to make her laugh."
A common complaint from Frenchwomen young and d'un certain age is that younger men no longer know how to make a delicate approach. "Too many guys come on heavy and they tell lies," says Mireille, a 34-year-old secretary in the posh 16th Arrondissement. Muriel, a recently divorced sales executive in her mid-forties, says: "Men nowadays don't have the old panache. They' re not romantic. They used to know how to make compliments and put you at ease.
Now they just come at you.
Christine, a publishing editor in her fifties, who has lived in London, says that there is still a big difference in the art of flirting on each side of the Channel. "Englishmen do not look at you in the street, perhaps because Englishwomen do not know what to do. Frenchwomen love being looked at. You miss it when you go abroad - those glances exchanged in the street, on public transport, the little smile of admiration," she says.
"Frenchmen still know that an admiring look flatters a woman and gives them pleasure. No more than that. It doesn't mean the man wants to put you in his bed."
AUSTRALIA
Six months ago a larrikin Australian mineworker woke after four hours' sleep, following eight at the bar, and saw a man in the mirror with a thousand-yard-glass stare.
Ian Green might finally have caught 40 winks, but none of those he gave to the girls the night before had got him a phone number. Ditto his mate, Brett - but they had a plan.
"We walked up to the shopping centre and we went, 'Righto, let's just approach 25 girls we don't know'," he says. "By the time we left we had phone numbers galore. We actually met up with two of them that night out in a club."
The 30-year-old health and safety adviser, in the macho state of Queensland, explains that the hangover has the same bracing effect as the brews that got him there - giving him that "what the hell" confidence.
Australian blokes may revel in a manly reputation and prefer - in the words of one comedian - to have their shirt ironed while it's on their back. But anecdotal evidence suggests that they would wilt in the presence of a wildflower if not for a little liquid courage.
"If you're sitting there at a barbecue, and you've got a beer, a girl's drinking the exact same drink, well then you've got something in common just to start up with," Ian says.
Jeff Cashen, of Sydney, says that most of his mates need a couple of drinks to up their swagger. But the singer-songwriter and emergency doctor says that now he's 35 years old, girls expect a more mature approach and he has studied the little black books of Neil Strauss, the American seduction artist.
"A couple of my friends have done a lot of reading on strategies. We've tried a lot of those strategies - in fact, more work than don't," he says.
One common strategy is noted by Katherine Feeney, an internet agony aunt. In this game plan, as one fella locks on to a female target, his "wingman" steps in to distract her friends with a little witty banter and, yes, a little more social lubrication. But there are some more redeeming features to the Australian - and British - male.
"There's a whole sort of larrikin spirit that you can't overlook and self-deprecating humour, which is fairly strong in Australian culture and it's accepted that that is a way to open up conversation," Katherine says. "In comparison with Poms, I have met a heap of English guys who are wittier, and that's a bit of a winner with Aussie girls, I think."
Sarah Miller, 22, of Mackay on the central coast of Queensland, agrees that confidence is the key to success in the dating game but that alcohol more often than not encourages a straight-up proposition - small talk not included.
Does she mind? "Not really, if they're hot it doesn't matter."