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Caterina Murino and Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. According to husband-and-wife psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron, posing and replying to such probing questions can germinate closeness between hardened marrieds, first dates and strangers alike.Jay Maidment

When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

This isn't normally how you quiz your spouse after another exhausting slog at work. Usually, that inquisition revolves around an unemptied dishwasher and the kids' homework status. What if instead of cranky and rote, these questions were more exploratory? Like, what item would you save from the house if it were burning? Or, do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

According to husband-and-wife psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron, posing and replying to such probing questions can germinate closeness between hardened marrieds, first dates and strangers alike. The researchers devised an intense 36-point questionnaire more than two decades ago to elicit intimacy in laboratory settings between people who hadn't met before. They found that back-and-forth disclosure with questions and answers becoming more and more vulnerable – "share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life" – consistently made the two people involved like each other. In one instance, two of the study participants ended up marrying. Arthur Aron, who now works at Stony Brook University and the University of California, Berkeley, dubbed it the "fast friends" technique.

The titillating research was resurrected by The New York Times last month, when Mandy Len Catron, a University of British Columbia writing instructor, decided to try out a more risqué version of the questionnaire on a date for her Modern Love essay "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This." Along with the searching questions – "how close and warm is your family?" – this quiz also involved staring silently into her date's eyes for several minutes. Describing an "accelerated intimacy," Catron pronounced it possible to lock down love over the course of a few hours – she and her date fell for each other.

That 36 questions and a quick stare down can help lure a partner or salvage a fizzling marriage proved an enticing concept: Catron's essay has attracted eight million readers to date. The quiz was promptly parlayed into an app, then spoofed with the requisite cat-video treatment: As his owner quizzes him, a fat feline meows unimpressed on a bed, eventually padding out of the room.

To humans, the exercise hints that beyond chemistry and chance, there may exist a more deliberate way to fall in love (and maybe more alluringly, to fall back in love). Amid the contrived amorousness of Valentine's Day, Arthur Aron spoke with The Globe about manufacturing romance.

What does the current reaction to your decades-old research tell you about people's hopes for their love lives?

People are looking for ways to make their relationships better. The thought that there is something out there that could make it more likely to happen, people will jump at that. Look at the excitement around online dating.

If you can conjure closeness through a questionnaire, does that imply that love is a choice you can make deliberately?

You certainly can do things to make it more likely. Just making yourself good-looking increases the chance of another person falling in love with you.

Where does that leave chemistry?

Most love doesn't happen at first sight. But we are wired to fall in love and make a strong, addictive pair bond with someone, particularly after puberty. It's thought that we wouldn't have survived as a species if we didn't have a tendency to have these unique attractions that bond us to the person, for at least a few years. If the circumstances are right and we bring something into play to make it more likely, why not?

How can 36 questions resurrect attraction for couples who've been together a long time?

There are several big things that we know help strengthen a long-term relationship that this procedure picks up on specifically. Relationship formation is plenty exciting but once that relationship is formed, you can get bored. After the first two or three years, one of the best things a couple can do is new and challenging things together. Whenever you do something that's novel and challenging with another person, you then associate that person with it. One of the reasons these questions are nice is that they bring up things that you don't normally talk about.

Another reason this exercise probably works well is that it generates responsiveness. The main reason self-disclosure – revealing personal stuff – develops closeness is the other person's response to it. When I teach a social psychology class I'll put them into random pairs and have them do this. They love doing it. I watch them and they're nodding. They're feeling the other person understands and validates them.

How else can these questions be used, beyond two people?

We've had two couples who don't know each other come to the lab and they do this activity as a foursome. Each question comes up and all four answer, one at a time. You're hearing your own partner reveal stuff that they may not have been prompted to before, not just to you, but to someone else. It makes people closer to their own partner and even increases passionate love within the relationship. You're also developing a connection with another couple. A major factor in the quality of a relationship is your social network. In North America we tend to downplay that; we see things as more individualized. But even in our culture, it's important to foster relationships with other people as a couple. If you have an evening with a couple that you don't know that well, try it.

Which of the 36 questions intensifies dynamics the most?

In developing friendships and romantic relationships, believing that you are similar matters a lot. So there's a question that asks people to name three things they have in common with the other person. Another huge factor in falling in love, other than appearance, is feeling that the other person likes you. So we ask people to name some things they like about this other person. Each question is a little more personal than the one that came before. It's about self-disclosing and gradually escalating, not overwhelming the person with too much, too fast.

What impact has the exercise had on your own marriage?

My wife and I try to live by all the research we can. We were having dinner at the home of some people we didn't know well and so we did this with them. We had a wonderful evening. We felt good about them and we felt good about each other.

What are you two doing for Valentine's Day?

Our anniversary is the day before Valentine's Day so we're celebrating then. We're going to the symphony. We'll go out to dinner and not have a zillion people out. Valentine's Day, we'll have some dear friends visit with us.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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