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The author tries to reproduce the falling-in-love experiment of psychologist Arthur Aron, involving a series of intimate questions and staring into each others'

by crusso 11y ago

The author tries to reproduce the falling-in-love experiment of psychologist Arthur Aron, involving a series of intimate questions and staring into each others' eyes. The end result? They fell in love. Despite that, her conclusion was: Love didn’t happen to us. We’re in love because we each made the choice to be.

mankyd 11y ago
That seems like a correct conclusion. They chose to try it out. It didn't just "happen".
- joslin01 11y ago
  I'm confused. What didn't "just happen"? 1 - The love 2 - Them trying to fall in love
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    The love didn't "just happen." They didn't wake up one day in their separate homes and think, "I'm in love with him/her." (Which, of course, can and does happen.) They went into it deliberately.
    - joslin01 11y ago
      I'm not disagreeing, but the analogy I would counter with is that a person can control how much they drink in order to feel drunk, but that person can never control the drunken feeling. Similarly, a person may meet lots of potential partners and might even fall for many of them, but this person will never be able to control the love feeling. To the extent that they believe they can is self-deception. Yet they can always choose to walk away from the person just like a person can choose to stop drinking.
dgreensp 11y ago
It's intellectually dishonest and detracts enormously from the quality of the article. You can see the author taking her unique experience and awkwardly shoving it into some familiar narrative. I'm also skeptical that her thoughts and emotions while eye-gazing (with a man she has a crush on) were entirely about how round eyeballs generally are, based on the other reports of eye-gazing I've heard (including one firsthand from an acquaintance). I'm guessing the author is either out of touch with her emotions or is applying the same politically-correct white-washing here as she did to her conclusion.
- themartorana 11y ago
  Wow. That's a lot of judgements and assumptions about a person's character and thoughts - considering you've probably never met this person before, and have only read this singular article.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  That's a lot of guessing and assuming you are doing. How... scientific.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
She also mentions that the experiment was compromised. They weren't strangers (as in the original experiment). They chose one another to try the experiment with. So she was correct in that way.
nilkn 11y ago
I don't fully understand your criticism. The thrust of this article is that, thanks to Dr. Aron's technique, it's more or less possible to fall in love with anyone. Therefore, who you fall in love with comes down to a matter of choice rather than chance. Of course, this is predicated on the validity of the technique.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Surely, the technique could be tested more rigorously.... Select a pair randomly. Put the pair into a room with one two-seat bench and one stool, with one table accessible from both, and at least one obvious video camera. Ask the participants to complete a survey, captioning 20 photographs with multiple-choice descriptions of smells. The subjects are asked to place "all metal objects" into lockers. Escort the pair to the "treatment room", immobilize their heads in a plastic frame, such that their faces are 5 cm apart, and stick a device up their noses that sprays a thin vaporizer mist. Hands and feet would be restrained, such that each person would be unable to touch the misting device. The experiment assistant leaves the room and causes a "room is being locked" sound to be heard inside. The lighting in the room would be set to 555nm green, the audio would play a quiet "electrical equipment" hum, and the pair would be left alone with a visible countdown clock for exactly 30 minutes, with beep tones sounding at 0:20:00, 0:25:00, 0:29:00, 0:29:15, 0:29:30, 0:29:45, 0:30:00. At 0:30:00, the lighting returns to normal, and a "room is being unlocked" sound is heard before the door opens. The control group gets a misting of water droplets. The experimental group gets oxytocin and vasopressin. Then the experiment assistant takes them out of the apparatus and returns them to the other room, where they are asked to repeat the image captioning task. The objective experimental data will examine whether a pair that elects to use the stool before the treatment will share the bench afterward, and whether the participants exchange any contact information during the debriefing period. I think it's important to not inform the subjects that the experimenter is trying to make them fall in love, because expectations do crazy things to psych experiment results.
  - klenwell 11y ago
    The next time someone asks me what love means to me, this is going to be my answer.
StavrosK 11y ago
That's not what I got. She does say: > Although it’s hard to credit the study entirely (it may have happened anyway), the study did give us a way into a relationship that feels deliberate. In that light, the "we made the choice to be" is, in part, because they chose to ask the questions.
- crusso 11y ago
  Read the last 3 paragraphs again. She's saying that performing the experiment created a space for intimacy but that she and her partner ultimately chose to be in love. She's acknowledging some of the effect, but trying to give herself some wiggle room that ultimately she was in control. Seemed like a bit of denial to me that her love was fundamentally so formulaic.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jemfinch 11y ago
> Love didn’t happen to us. We’re in love because we each made the choice to be. Yes, because she chose to try to reproduce the experiment. That's her point. She didn't just have to wait for it to happen: she chose to see if she could replicate it, and she did replicate it.

by crusso 11y ago

mankyd 11y ago

That seems like a correct conclusion. They chose to try it out. It didn't just "happen".

joslin01 11y ago
I'm confused. What didn't "just happen"? 1 - The love 2 - Them trying to fall in love
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  The love didn't "just happen." They didn't wake up one day in their separate homes and think, "I'm in love with him/her." (Which, of course, can and does happen.) They went into it deliberately.
  - joslin01 11y ago
    I'm not disagreeing, but the analogy I would counter with is that a person can control how much they drink in order to feel drunk, but that person can never control the drunken feeling. Similarly, a person may meet lots of potential partners and might even fall for many of them, but this person will never be able to control the love feeling. To the extent that they believe they can is self-deception. Yet they can always choose to walk away from the person just like a person can choose to stop drinking.

dgreensp 11y ago

It's intellectually dishonest and detracts enormously from the quality of the article. You can see the author taking her unique experience and awkwardly shoving it into some familiar narrative. I'm also skeptical that her thoughts and emotions while eye-gazing (with a man she has a crush on) were entirely about how round eyeballs generally are, based on the other reports of eye-gazing I've heard (including one firsthand from an acquaintance). I'm guessing the author is either out of touch with her emotions or is applying the same politically-correct white-washing here as she did to her conclusion.

themartorana 11y ago
Wow. That's a lot of judgements and assumptions about a person's character and thoughts - considering you've probably never met this person before, and have only read this singular article.
chris_wot 11y ago
That's a lot of guessing and assuming you are doing. How... scientific.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

She also mentions that the experiment was compromised. They weren't strangers (as in the original experiment). They chose one another to try the experiment with. So she was correct in that way.

nilkn 11y ago

I don't fully understand your criticism. The thrust of this article is that, thanks to Dr. Aron's technique, it's more or less possible to fall in love with anyone. Therefore, who you fall in love with comes down to a matter of choice rather than chance. Of course, this is predicated on the validity of the technique.

logfromblammo 11y ago
Surely, the technique could be tested more rigorously.... Select a pair randomly. Put the pair into a room with one two-seat bench and one stool, with one table accessible from both, and at least one obvious video camera. Ask the participants to complete a survey, captioning 20 photographs with multiple-choice descriptions of smells. The subjects are asked to place "all metal objects" into lockers. Escort the pair to the "treatment room", immobilize their heads in a plastic frame, such that their faces are 5 cm apart, and stick a device up their noses that sprays a thin vaporizer mist. Hands and feet would be restrained, such that each person would be unable to touch the misting device. The experiment assistant leaves the room and causes a "room is being locked" sound to be heard inside. The lighting in the room would be set to 555nm green, the audio would play a quiet "electrical equipment" hum, and the pair would be left alone with a visible countdown clock for exactly 30 minutes, with beep tones sounding at 0:20:00, 0:25:00, 0:29:00, 0:29:15, 0:29:30, 0:29:45, 0:30:00. At 0:30:00, the lighting returns to normal, and a "room is being unlocked" sound is heard before the door opens. The control group gets a misting of water droplets. The experimental group gets oxytocin and vasopressin. Then the experiment assistant takes them out of the apparatus and returns them to the other room, where they are asked to repeat the image captioning task. The objective experimental data will examine whether a pair that elects to use the stool before the treatment will share the bench afterward, and whether the participants exchange any contact information during the debriefing period. I think it's important to not inform the subjects that the experimenter is trying to make them fall in love, because expectations do crazy things to psych experiment results.
- klenwell 11y ago
  The next time someone asks me what love means to me, this is going to be my answer.

StavrosK 11y ago

That's not what I got. She does say: > Although it’s hard to credit the study entirely (it may have happened anyway), the study did give us a way into a relationship that feels deliberate. In that light, the "we made the choice to be" is, in part, because they chose to ask the questions.

crusso 11y ago
Read the last 3 paragraphs again. She's saying that performing the experiment created a space for intimacy but that she and her partner ultimately chose to be in love. She's acknowledging some of the effect, but trying to give herself some wiggle room that ultimately she was in control. Seemed like a bit of denial to me that her love was fundamentally so formulaic.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jemfinch 11y ago

> Love didn’t happen to us. We’re in love because we each made the choice to be. Yes, because she chose to try to reproduce the experiment. That's her point. She didn't just have to wait for it to happen: she chose to see if she could replicate it, and she did replicate it.