Get a loved one to stand in front of you. Look into each other’s eyes for four minutes without saying anything. What do you see?
Insurance company Prudential launched campaign called “Relationship Reconnect” which involved pairs of people – who know and care about each other – to look at each other without a word for four uninterrupted minutes. Seemingly awkward initially, the participants of this social experiment soon felt something stir in them and waves of emotions overcame them.
This experiment was actually inspired by American psychologist Dr. Arthur Aron’s interpersonal closeness experiment, in which he got participants – strangers to one other – to answer 36 questions, and then look into each other’s eyes for four continuous minutes. Dr Aron believed that this would foster closeness by evoking mutual vulnerability and empathy and would also prompt a sense of intimacy.
In Prudential’s experiment, a local counselling psychologist oversaw the process and worked with 12 pairs of Singaporeans in different types of relationships, such as married couples, siblings, as well as parents and their children.
The video from the campaign showed emotional and poignant moments of the participants’ interactions. One participant, Justin Lim Chieng Ho, part of a husband-and-wife pair, said, “During the moment of silence, you start to think of the good things about your wife and that’s why I decided to give her a hug, which I’ve not done for a long, long, long, long time.”
Take a look at the video. Have some tissue paper on standby too.
Editor’s note: This post is brought to you by Prudential but all opinions are the writer’s own.
