Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? What would constitute a “perfect” day for you? When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else? If you were able to live to the age of ninety and retain either the mind or body of a thirty-year-old for the last sixty years of your life, which would you want? After this reciprocal listening exercise, the paired strangers reported intense feelings of closeness, much more so than subjects paired for the same amount of time to solve a problem or accomplish a task.
