Mandy Len Catron: Falling in love is the easy part

Section 1:

I published this article in the "New York Times Modern Love" column in January of this year. "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This." So the procedure is fairly simple: two strangers take turns asking each other 36 increasingly personal questions and then they stare into each other's eyes without speaking for four minutes.

So here are a couple of sample questions. Number 12: If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? Number 28: When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? As you can see, they really do get more personal as they go along.

So when I first came across this study a few years earlier, one detail really stuck out to me, and that was the rumor that two of the participants had gotten married six months later, and they'd invited the entire lab to the ceremony. So I was of course very skeptical about this process of just manufacturing romantic love, but of course I was intrigued. And when I got the chance to try this study myself, with someone I knew but not particularly well, I wasn't expecting to fall in love.