What makes a good dating app question?

Updated: September 3, 2026

The four tests a question has to pass

• Specific. "What music do you like?" invites a shrug. "What's the last song you replayed immediately?" invites an answer.
• Answerable. The other person has to actually have an answer. A question only you could get right is a wall, not an opener.
• Open enough to need words. If it can be answered yes or no, it usually will be — and the conversation stops there.
• Revealing. A good answer should tell you something you could not have read off a profile.

The strongest question is the second one

The single best-supported finding in this area is that follow-up questions — the ones that build on what the other person just said — do the most work. In a 2017 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers analysed 1,961 real second-date decisions from speed-dating events and found that people who asked more follow-up questions were more likely to get a yes.

The reason is that a follow-up is proof you were listening. Anyone can open with a prepared line; only someone paying attention can ask about the detail you mentioned thirty seconds ago.

Why it is worth the effort

The same research programme found the effect is not limited to dating: across its studies, the people who asked more questions were liked more by the person they were talking to, in written conversations and face to face alike. Asking is the rare move that needs no preparation and cannot be faked — either you took in what the other person said, or you did not.

Questions that tend to fall flat

• Anything answerable with one word — "how was your weekend?"
• Interview questions stacked back to back with no reaction in between.
• Openers about appearance, which ask nothing and reveal nothing.
• Questions you have obviously sent to everyone.

Writing questions on Qulo

Qulo turns this into the actual mechanic: you write between 2 and 4 multiple-choice questions — up to 10 on a paid plan — with four options each and mark the correct answer, and someone matches with you only by getting all of them right. That constraint is a useful discipline — a question with one defensible answer forces you to be specific about what you actually think, which is exactly what makes it worth answering.