How long does it take to form a bond with a complete stranger?

You may have ‘something in your eye’ after watching this powerful video

We all know that eye contact is a potent thing, and this was proven last December when a study conducted by the National Institute for Psychological Science in Japan, showed that four minutes of direct eye contact – even with a stranger - could create strong bonds and connections.

In January 2015, The New York Times published the 36 questions that psychologist Arthur Aron believed was all it took for a couple to fall in love.

Now Ray-Ban have launched Eye to Eye: A Social Experiment in Courage, which sees strangers ask each other the 36 questions while maintaining eye contact over four minutes, and the bond between the people featured becomes extremely clear very quickly.

Among the participants is a man who opens up to the partner he just met about the most traumatic experience of his life.

‘When I was 13 years old I came home from soccer practice one day and my mum was lying on the ground, she was dying,' he said. ‘Discovering her was the most insanely traumatic event of my life.

’Other experiences include a transgender women speaking of the moment she first realised she was more comfortable as a woman, and a woman in her forties who is restarting her life after having breast cancer.

‘I was living with my boyfriend and he couldn’t handle me having breast cancer and after I had my mastectomy, we broke up.' She cotinued: ‘So I’m single and dating and online and trying to see what it’s like to date as a breast cancer survivor in her 40s. I just have the term carpe diem

here.

Well we’re now emotional wrecks, thanks Ray-Ban.