Throwback
What does this photo bring back for you?
Put the phone between you and spin. Whatever it lands on, you answer, which is the only rule.
Who's playing?
Your people, photos and stories built into the game.
What does this photo bring back for you?
What’s something you’ve learned about yourself because of Alex?
Okay, who was actually responsible for “the airport incident”?
No changing the story now.
🎁 Make it yours, or make it a gift.
Create Your Wheel · $11 → One-time payment · Yours forever · 🔒 PrivateTake the free wheel with you
Keep playing whenever you want.
Want the whole thing to know your story?
Names, memories & inside jokes → questions made personal.
Create your wheel · $11 → connectionquestions.com/make
🎁 Make yours, or make one to give.
Turns out, questions actually work. The nerdy science behind why.
People consistently overestimated how awkward a deeper conversation would feel, and underestimated how connected and happy it would leave them. The gap was widest for the deep questions, not the shallow ones.
Strangers who worked through a set of increasingly personal questions, taking turns, reported significantly greater closeness than pairs who made small talk for exactly the same length of time.
Across three studies of live conversation, including a speed-dating night, people who asked more questions were better liked, and follow-up questions did most of the work. Nobody predicts this beforehand.
Seven studies found the same gap: people judge their own vulnerability far more harshly than they judge someone else’s. From the inside it reads as weakness. From the outside, watching someone else do it, it reads as brave.
Which is the whole point of a wheel. If you choose, you choose the safe one, every time. Taking the choice away is the part that works.
Kardas, Kumar & Epley (2022), Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · Chicago Booth & UT Austin.
Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone & Bator (1997), The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · Stony Brook.
Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017), It doesn’t hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · Harvard Business School.
Bruk, Scholl & Bless (2018), Beautiful mess effect: Self-other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · University of Mannheim.