Can 45 minutes of increasingly personal conversation and relationship-building tasks create more closeness than small talk?

Details

The researchers tested a structured way to build closeness in an experimental setting. Participants worked in pairs, sharing personal information and completing relationship-building tasks that gradually increased in intensity over 45 minutes. Study 1 found greater closeness after these activities than after comparable small-talk tasks. This finding supports that structured set of activities, not a general rule that sharing any personal information will make people close.

Separate studies, Studies 2 and 3, tested other possible influences on closeness. Despite having adequate ability to detect effects, they did not find clear evidence that closeness changed when pairs were matched to avoid disagreement on important attitudes, were led to expect mutual liking, or were explicitly given the goal of getting close. These results do not prove that those factors never matter.

The abstract does not specify participants’ ages or whether they already knew each other. It also does not report the size of the closeness difference or whether it persisted beyond the interaction, so the result does not establish a lasting relationship.