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Thirty-Six Questions [1]

Fiction [2]
6.17.20

For what in your life do you feel most grateful? What is your most terrible memory? What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? In a 1997 study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologist Arthur Aron along with scholars Edward Melinat, Elaine N. Aron, Robert Darrin Vallone, and Renee J. Bator developed thirty-six questions that supposedly lead to accelerated intimacy between two strangers. Write a story in which two strangers stuck together for a set amount of time decide to ask each other some of these questions [3]. Is it by accident? Does one of them have designs on the other? Do the questions succeed in breaking down emotional barriers or lead to unexpected consequences?

Editor’s Note: In an earlier version of this prompt, we neglected to include information about Elaine Aron’s professional qualifications as well as the other scholars involved in the study; the prompt has been updated to include this information.

Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/thirtysix_questions

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/thirtysix_questions [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/fiction [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/style/36-questions-that-lead-to-love.html