When getting to know someone, you want to get the right information that helps reveal the most about them and their personality. These 10 questions are great starter questions to ask a romantic prospect, a new friend, or potentially (except for number 8) a job interview candidate.
10 Questions To Ask Someone That Will Reveal The Most About Them
‘Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.’ – Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II, The King and I
When you first meet someone, you know so little about each other. Getting to know someone can be fun, and it can be as long as you want it to be. But what if you want to speed things up a bit and ensure you’re in a good connection with each other rather than wasting time? Here are ten questions you can ask each other that will reveal the most about yourselves.
1. What’s something that no one would guess about you?
This question gets at the underlying nature of their personality. Often we can guess quite a bit about someone based on their appearance, clothes, and mannerisms, but what are they hiding?
2. What do you believe in?
This is a pretty open question to ask someone, but it could reveal a lot about them. For example, they could say anything from ‘The constitution’ to ‘Santa Claus’ to ‘Honesty.’ Or, maybe they believe that Casablanca was the best movie ever made. Either way, this question could tell you much about someone and what is important to them.
3. If you could be doing anything, anywhere right now, what and where would it be?
You might also want to add, ‘if money were no object’ to this question to get them to reveal the most about themselves. This is a way to ask what their favorite activity and place is. Maybe they have a longing to move away to a different place or to be doing a different career.
4. What do you wish you had done differently in your life?
This question will reveal a lot about someone’s past because, ultimately, we can’t change what we have already done. Living with regrets is no fun, nor is focusing on what might have been. You want to know what helped shape this person and if they continue to focus on the past or have their eyes set on the future.
5. What are you doing to improve yourself?
No one is perfect, so this question will reveal what someone dislikes about themselves and if they are taking the initiative to fix their flaws.
6. What’s one thing you’ve had to overcome in your life?
From a short 5-minute conversation, researchers looked at the differences between the sexes of how we perceive the friendliness of someone of the opposite sex. They found that males were more likely to perceive that women were being flirtatious or seductive. Women in the study did not think that friendly men who were talking to them were trying to seduce them.
7. What’s the most important thing to you?
This question could reveal if someone is materialistic, for example, if they say they value their car or a diamond ring. It could also reveal if they are idealistic, for example, if they say that their integrity is the most important thing to them.
8. What did you learn about yourself from your previous relationships?
Researchers at Lehigh University and the University of Texas looked at the question of what it really means to get to know someone. Most people think they are good judges of character. Still, in reality, we aren’t very accurate with our assessments of personality and our predictions of someone’s behavior based on what we know about them. Although people are often confident about the accuracy of their perceptions, ‘time and time again, researchers have shown that people’s impressions of others are prone to biases.’
The researchers found that people in a relationship are more likely to be accurate judges of personality if it is beneficial to their relationships. For example, being able to perceive your partner’s emotional state is beneficial to the health of your relationship.
9. How do you handle being in a bad mood?
Everyone has bad days, but how we handle them makes the biggest difference in our personalities. When you want to get to know someone, this question will reveal a lot about them, but you should also observe them when they are frustrated to see how they respond.
10. What do you wish someone would ask you?
Some people are just waiting for someone to ask them a certain question because they are dying to share some personal information with the rest of the world. Maybe they have a philosophical view they would love to share, or they want to reveal a hidden part of themselves to others. Either way, you’ll be sure to find out with this question.
