How to connect with anyone in four minutes
BY Anna Walker
1st Jan 2015 Dating & Relationships
Studies say just four minutes of uninterrupted eye contact can increase intimacy, even between complete strangers. Six couples test the theory out. Tissues at the ready—the results are surprisingly emotional.
Inspired by the New York Times article, ‘To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This’, YouTube channel Soul Pancake decided to test out the idea that maintaining four minutes of uninterrupted eye contact could create intense feelings of intimacy and love.
The eye contact theory emerged from a series of love experiments carried out by Doctor Arthur Aron, the same professor who devised 36 questions he believed would lead a couple to fall in love.
The idea is that by the time four minutes is up, the feeling of vulnerability and intimacy cultivated will inevitably make the couple feel close, even when they started out as strangers.
Soul Pancake invited six couples who had been together for varying amounts of time (strangers, the fourth date, one year, two years married, five years with a child and married for 55 years) to try out the experiment in front of their cameras.
For such a simple act, it makes for surprisingly emotional viewing.
The couples are clearly uncomfortable to start with, calling the idea "weird" and "unnatural", but their emotional responses by the end of the four minutes are moving.
Perhaps the most compelling participants are the couple who have been married for 55 years. When they've finished the experiment, the husband comments, “When I look at you closely I realise how much I need you and how much you mean to me because that’s the truth, and I couldn’t imagine being with anybody else."
It's incredible that every couple comments on how they’ve never maintained eye contact for so long before. In our age of digital technology and life online, perhaps the best message this video can bring is that we need to remember to connect with our loved ones on a physical level.
The husband of the couple married for two years sums it up perfectly when his wife asks what he was thinking about.
“How wonderful it was to just sit here and look at my wife for a change. Without discussing work, business or situations.”
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