Self-expansion in a Relationship
Arthur Aron is a Research Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on identifying interpersonal closeness on how self-expansion motivations relate to and can be used to alleviate the decline in relationship satisfaction over time. His diverse methods include representative surveys, lab studies, and brain imaging. Arthur earned a PhD in psychology from the University of Toronto and is actively involved in research collaborations with his wife, Elaine Aron.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Arthur Aron discusses the motivational principle of self-expansion in relationships
An in-depth look at merging relationships with one another for stronger bonds
How constantly evolving and collaborating in your relationships can lead to a stronger bond
Arthur details a study and data on marital satisfaction
The effects and conditions that stress can put on a relationship — and activities to strengthen your bond
Arthur explains how to measure satisfaction and closeness over time
Arthur describes his research on improving relationships and establishing closeness
In this episode…
What factors are most influential in boosting your relationship and intimacy with your partner? Is it possible to create and maintain a meaningful, fulfilling, and successful relationship?
According to Arthur Aron, a romance does not need to be an overpowering force of passion like Romeo and Juliet — but built on values of trust, loyalty, and emotions of deeper connections. When you become comfortable with your partner, sometimes the connection becomes blurred, which is why Arthur recommends finding ways to keep the excitement alive for a happier, healthier, and long-lasting relationship. His research on human relationships focuses on the interpersonal closeness found by self-expanding activities done with your partner.
In this episode of Our.Love Podcast, Jim Coan sits down with Arthur Aron, Research Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University, to explain the self-expansion model of forging interpersonal relationships. Arthur discusses self-expanding activities for strengthening relationship bonds, how to measure and improve satisfaction in a relationship, and his research behind his “36 Questions That Lead To Love” model.
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to Our.Love Podcast, where we share insights from top scientists and relationship experts on all things about love that are out of the box, refreshing and new. Now sit back, grab a cold drink or hot one if you prefer, and enjoy today's episode.
Jim Coan 0:25
So, Art Aron, you're just one of my, I don't know how to express it. You're one of the heroes of relationship research. from almost any perspective. fusions are not trivial either. But we well, I'm hoping they're not trivial but good Lord beyond that. Yes. I'm So your professor of psychology? I'm at Stony Brook? And, um, what else have you been up to recently? Where else are you in your in your multi talented ways?
Arthur Aron 1:08
Well, I mean, mostly, I'm doing research. And I am physically these days, mostly out at Berkeley on the West Coast, because that's where my wife is. And for years, we were traveling back and forth. We live in one semester, we live in New York and she’d fly back and forth, one semester, we live out here, but during the pandemic, I've been out here, and in Berkeley, where I am now. And basically, I'm doing research on close relationships, but also applying some of our model to intergroup relations. And I collaborate with my wife on her research on highly sensitive people. And, you know, we're starting to do a little research on applying some of our models to climate change.
Jim Coan 1:56
Fascinating. Wow, well, I'm gonna really look forward to hearing some of that. But um, I was wondering if it's okay with you, if we can start talking about some of your, your, your classic work on self expansion and the inclusion of you know, as I originally learned that the inclusion of the other and self principle along with the motivational principle, maybe we can break that down a little bit?
Arthur Aron 2:20
Yeah, there's self expansion model, something we developed, many, many years ago, inspired, actually, by Eastern philosophy and by Plato. And the idea is that a fundamental goal is to seek more and more to expand the self
Jim Coan 2:37
is that the motivational principle?
Arthur Aron 2:39
That's the motivational principle, and that's the core of it. But when we did, so, we came to the realization that one major way people do that is through relationships. And one of the main reasons is that when you form a relationship, the other becomes part of yourself. And, and to some extent, I mean that, yeah, early, and that expands the self, you also include the relationship, but in forming your relationship expands itself. That's exciting. It's new. It's more, but literally, I mean, actually, somewhat literally, the nature of the self becomes more, we mix up memories, we have a hard time distinguishing our close other from ourselves. When we do morphing studies, there's all sorts of ways that we find that, you know, we mix up who we are with who they are. And the closer we are, the more that's the case, that's usually a very good thing. And when it happens, as it as you develop it, it's very exciting. You know, I'm growing, I'm becoming more, you know.
Jim Coan 3:48
Yeah. And as you're becoming more, does that mean? more interesting, more efficacious, more capable in the world?
Arthur Aron 4:02
Well, in some ways, yes. Because my partner's resources and knowledge to some extent, become mine. Sometimes more than they should I say, I sometimes find with collaborators that, you know, who are in a somewhat different field, that I think they know what they know. And then suddenly I realize no, I don't, but no, you know, so. But just, you know, for one of the things, one of our earliest studies was, we asked people who had we followed a large group of first year students, and we asked them each week, you know, have you fallen in love? And among many other questions, they didn't know that was the focus of it. And then we had them say, Who are you today? And they had to list a bunch of words that came to mind. Actually, with first year students we found about a quarter of them fell in love. But what we found is from the week before, to the week after they fell in love, there was a dramatic increase in the number of categories they listed as their own. Who are you today? Much more so than, you know, other times for them or for people who didn't fall in love. And that's been replicated. You know, over a couple different studies we did. And Gary Lewandowski, a former student, who's now doing great researcher, and so on, he's professor, even Chair of his department, Gary showed that you get the same kind of effect, when you look at when people lose a relationship, that who they are becomes less. They are.
Jim Coan 5:38
And so in. So sort of what you're saying is that when we, when we forge a relationship, at least a love relationship, so far, maybe maybe you know more about this, but it also works,
Arthur Aron 5:49
it also works with friendships and close others and having a child, but whoever relationships are, you know, very powerful.
Jim Coan 5:58
I mean, it's, it's hard for me to I don't know, if you started having this feeling when you were doing this research, but hearing about this research, lights me up like a firework. It's so it's so mind boggling, in one sense, but in another sense, it you know, we both done some brain research, and I've done some brain research directly related to your self expansion model, because I thought, well, shoot, we have this opportunity to test this, and then what we found, we'll get there eventually. But, um, there's a there, if we are such a hyper cooperative species, one question you can ask is, well, how do we do it? How do we, how do we merge in terms of cooperative labor? And that's one question, you know, you can help me lift the table at the stairs. But it seems to me that you in your work has had, you've answered one of the these really basic fundamental questions about how humans do what they do, which is that they, they incorporate the other into their representation, however, that's accomplished, naturally, of the self. And usually, that's a very good thing.
Arthur Aron 7:23
You know, sometimes it can be too much. Yeah, one study where we ask people, you know, we have this standard measure of how much does the other part of the self, and that we have overlapping circles to different degrees. And that's that measure has been used 1000s of times in studies now. But my favorite measure, works, cross culturally donated, same the same language stuff, it's very nice measure. But one of the studies we've had, we've done a few studies, Deb Mashiach was the leader on this, in which we asked people, you know, how much about their relationship? And we also asked them, What would you how much would you like it to be? And what we found is that overall, the closer it is, to what they'd like it to be, the better up to a point. If you're even closer than you want to be. There's a small percentage 10% or so of couples, you know, married couples who are feeling they've lost themselves to the other. But for most people, it's a very good thing. It's a very good course, you know, again, it depends on who you're merging with, you know, falling in love with someone you merge with them. But if you're in another relationship, and things are going well, you know, that's, that's not so good. But yeah, in general, it's, it's a very good thing. And friendships are almost always good things. Yeah. And there's a merger there, too. You know.
Jim Coan 8:45
Now, do you see connections here with Dan Wagner's notion of transactive memory, you know, about that? I should be reminded, so, Dan Wagner, who was a cognitive psychologist, he was here at UVA for a while, but then he wound up going to Harvard. And he, um, in the, in the 70s, I think, at some point, wrote this paper, he really got back to it in any strong sense, that showing that I'm arguing with with some interesting data that our biographies and our, our knowledge of how to do things in the world is largely non trivially embedded in our social relationships, not in our heads. So but we think it's in our heads. So this is exactly what what you defined really clearly in the work that you would do, which is that part of the inclusion of the other in the self is that their resources are our resources including even their memory. We will attribute we will miss it. attribute our ability to remember something based on our membership in a relationship because the person we know can remember it. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, that can sometimes be a little problematic.
Arthur Aron 10:14
But but, you know, as I said, that happens with knowledge things too, you know, you think you know, something you don't, you might think you know how to get somewhere to get to, you know, the closer you are, the more you sort of think you know, what your partner knows. And, you know, if you're in a close relationship, that works just fine, because they can handle some of the things that you can handle some of the things and, you know, one of the things we talk a lot about in our research is that when you form a relationship, there's an enormous self expansion from including them rapidly and stuff, especially if it's a, you know, some bad falling in love thing. But then after a while, you get used to it. But if you do new novel, exciting things with the partner, that sense of growth gets associated with a partner. And the reason I think that came to mind, is that one of the things my wife and I do that self expanding together, is we collaborate on research. Yeah. That can be difficult to at times, of course. Uh huh. But it's, you know, as you know, when you collect a bunch of data, and you sit down with it, you know, yeah, someone put it, you're in the room with a tiger. It's very exciting. And of course, the results come out, you know?
Jim Coan 11:37
Yeah, well, the reason it's a tiger is that very often the results come out a little bit differently. And yeah, more interestingly, than you thought they had to. Yeah, that too. Yeah. And sometimes they just don't work. But well, I think I mentioned to you are that we're our you know, we're doing this series on curiosity. And, you know, it may be of interest, it may strike you as curious, we'll say that I'm one of the possibly the first person that I thought of when we started dating and digging deep into curiosity was you. And it's precisely for these reasons, what you've done with your work, including your work on long term romantic relationships, sort of what keeps romance going, you just said it is sort of growing together. Right. And for me, in my mind, that's, that's a process of, um, not only curiosity, per se, just sort of being a curious person. But I wonder about the role of sort of Tenshi ating. That curiosity or capitalizing, does that resonate with you at all? Yeah, talk about what you're asking for.
Arthur Aron 12:57
We're always looking for opportunities for growth, expansion. I mean, not always, I mean, if we're suffering, we're just trying to survive. But right. You know, we've argued that there's two fundamental, you know, evolutionary motivations, the survival and the expansion. And if you're under survival threat, you may not focus on expansion. And indeed, in the relationship research, there's quite a bit showing that things that operate very differently with couples who live in terrible environments are under great stress. But when we aren't doing reasonably well, then in any domain, we're looking for more, more and more and more. And that's what expansion is about. And seeking what will be more, of course, involves curiosity. You know, I want to find it. I haven't thought much about it until you brought this up. But, you know, framing it in that way. But sure, yeah, Curiosity is really important. One of the studies we did some years ago, also with Trey Lewandowski was, he was involved in that. Anyway, it was a study in which we looked at, you know, it's thought that people usually prefer a partner who's similar to themself. And in general, there's been lots of research showing similar it doesn't matter that much for the relationship, but thinking you're similar matters. Now, with a few exceptions, most people are heterosexual. They're not really similar in that regard. But mostly we're looking for we think we want similars Now, it turns out that if you think the relationship will work fairly well, you'd actually prefer someone who's a little different because they're more interesting. Haha. Now again, not on every domain you know, if you you know, if you are calm person, and they're an angry person, you might know what that difference. But in the study we did, we looked at things that you're engaged in or you're interested in. So someone who's really interested in science, you know, who's really involved in science might be if they think the relationship would work. I actually prefer someone who's interested in music. You know, it's like, the difference. I'm going to grow from that I'm going to learn some new things I didn't know.
Jim Coan 15:09
So I wonder, you know, from a certain perspective, or maybe just directly, you know, it sounds like curiosity then is, is one of the mechanisms for meeting this core, this core motivational drive, let's say that humans have or that all critters may have. I call animals critters, I think all critters.
Arthur Aron 15:33
Yeah, have that. And it sounds Yes, I think that's that's why else would we be curious except to gain something from it? Again, we could be curious just to find where we can survive. But I think curiosity is mostly about growth. You know, revival is about things we already know about.
Jim Coan 15:52
Well, it isn't growth, ultimately about survival as well sort of provides that that extra resource pack, though, that we do we carry with us. Yeah, that too. Yeah. Yeah, too. Yeah. So can we get back to a little bit to the long term romance, or long term romance, because, you know, we have this idea that, when you meet, we've established that when you meet someone, you start establishing relationship, you start attributing more adjectives are descriptors tears to your own self, partly because you've incorporated the adjectives that you would have attributed to them. It's your own self. And you both expand and you grow. And it's all very joyful. But then years go by? And maybe, maybe, you know, maybe curiosity isn't so easy to sustain. Um, after lots, lots of years, I'm happy. What happens among these couples that stay romantically engaged with each other for the long term? And some do? Yeah, well, that's the first question, right? It's like, does that even happen?
Arthur Aron 17:14
Well, we did a nationally representative US survey. And we found that among people married 10 years or longer, 40% said they were intensely in love with their partner. Already. Now you have to understand, this is 10 years, that means only about half who got married are still together. So maybe it's better, though, but still. And, you know, the question was, another question was, do they really mean it? Now? In general, we find that self report questions about love and stuff are actually fairly accurate. They're not that influenced. But just to check, we did an fMRI study of people who'd been married at least 10 years, most of them 20 years, who claim to be very intensely in love with their partner madly crazily in love. Yeah. And we put them in the scanner. And we've done a lot of studies, as you know, of people who have recently fallen in love. So we kind of knew as others have to, so we kind of knew what to look for. And these couples showed that same dopamine reward area, when they were showing pictures of their partner versus familiar strangers. It's really, you know, it seems very real, and, and meaningful to people. Now, the question is what gets them there? Right. That's the question. That's what everybody watching this is going to want to know. Yeah, well, we don't know for sure. In fact, we're doing some research. Now. There's so much research, longitudinal research on, you know, how relationships develop and what from early on, predicts, you know, people being happy together. But there really isn't any from early showing what predicts people to be especially happy together. Now we had the data are there and so Terry Orbach, who's got a great data set, and I and Rosie Shrout, one of her former postdocs are doing some studies now, where we're analyzing some large datasets to try to smooth that out. Now, we have some ideas of what they might be. In the nationally representative survey we did those who were intensely in love, were more likely to report that they do interesting activities with their partner, but it wasn't the only predictor. But it was an important one. And, you know, we just want to see if we can figure out what's what's going on here. I mean, we do know, a from one data set is actually one that Terry had collected some years ago, that when people were asked that your think was your seven are you, you know, are you bored, how exciting or what you do with your partner and then we measured the same people were measured here. 16 those who were, you know, not bored and excited. We're much more likely to be happy if you're 16 than the others. So it's a major predictor of happiness. There are other things too. I mean, certain things have to be in place. You know, you have to, I mean, a huge factor in general and marital satisfaction is just yourself. People don't want to know that. But if you're anxious or depressed or insecure, it's hard to have a relationship, you know, mate, I mean, it's possible, but it's much harder. You know, and we, we tend to, you know, at first we're excited in relationship, and then we feel bad, we blame the partner. Yeah, you're anxious or depressed or insecure, a major thing you can do is to do something about it. You know, if it's minor, you know, learn to meditate, do something, if it's more major gift therapy, or if it's very major, get medication that really matters. And then there's other things like being able to handle conflicts. So a lot of research on that. Being you know, not having not having problems with family, you know, what's the iconic example of romantic love in the West?
Jim Coan 21:02
The iconic example of romantic love in the West, you know, in literature and with. Boy, I don't know about Romeo and Juliet. No, I'm kidding. Of course. Yeah. Romeo and Juliet, that work out that didn't work out too. Well. Yeah. the Capulets and Montagues. You know, the problem was family. Yeah. Isn't it the case?
Arthur Aron 21:24
Yeah. I mean, it's not quite so big an issue with, you know, in American culture, as in many Eastern cultures are many more traditional cultures. But still, there's many groups for who it's a big issue, it's very important for couples, once they have, especially once they have children, to pay attention to their in laws and try to have good relationships with them. And another big factor is, as mentioned earlier, just stress that you're under, it's hard to deal with that. And then, you know, those are some of the biggies that really, you know, affect relationships. But then there are things that people can do to make them a lot better beyond that. And one of them is to do self expanding activities regularly spent a lot of studies now, where they've, you know, we've done early studies where we randomly assigned couples to, once a week do something from a list we gave them that was novel and challenging versus merely pleasant, but enjoyable. And the ones who did the novel and exciting, you know, every week for about an hour or two for 10 weeks, had a huge increase in, in their relationship quality. Okay, they're just the people doing the pleasant things, you know, not just Same old, same old, even if they're nice, make different.
Jim Coan 22:38
You know, you said something really important about how people who have sort of a harder time in relationships, often are people who are depressed, anxious, maybe we could say, generally broadly neurotic, you know, that, you know, you or you're under a lot of stress. And one of the things that we know about those conditions, and the effect that stress has on your mind is that it creates a self focus it Yeah. It oriented towards, you know, the the state of yourself in the in the in the, you know, whether you're safe or whether you're successful or whether whatever it is. And that seems to, I mean, I wonder if that keeps you from progressing into a self expansive kind of mode?
Arthur Aron 23:27
Good question. I don't know. No, no. I mean, I think also, I mean, I don't really know, how curious or how much people who are depressed or anxious or seeking self expansion. I mean, I can also imagine that they wanted even work because they're suffering, were there some way I can really do something exciting, maybe they're more likely to find an alternative or do something else besides their partner? It's easy to blame the partner. Yeah, you know? So I
Jim Coan 23:56
know, fascinating that you can do these these exercises, can you know that? To go into to you, you give them a list of things to try?
Arthur Aron 24:07
Well, what we did in that initial study, is we gave each couple member who volunteer separately, a list of, I don't know, 50 items, that things that couples do together. And we asked them to, for each to say how exciting it would be to do with your partner how pleasant and then we randomly assign them in one group got a list that each of the partners had rated as highly exciting, but only moderately pleasant. And the other group got a list and they weren't the same for the other group, that list that was highly pleasant, but only moderately exciting. And, you know, there were different items. Sometimes what's exciting for one couple was, you know, nearly pleasant for another board. So, you know, there's differences in what would be exciting for people. But you know, exciting. You know, what we found is that has to do with being new and original, not just with being, you know, it's not doesn't have to do with heart fluttering or you know, you know, yes, skydiving, if it's not too much for you can be exciting, but also taking a cooking class together, right? Anything like that, you know? Yeah, it's, and we've done research on that and it's not, you know, it doesn't hurt if it's got that physiological stirring. Yeah, and of course doing something novel and challenging with the partner, one of the reasons it makes you feel better, there's some new research that's come out lovely research that shows that one of the moderators, one of the mediators, one of the things that helps make it happen is it increases the quality of your sex life, and it makes you more have more sexual desire. So when new, exciting things it affects for a variety of dimensions, but one of the things it does is it makes your sex life better, which is an important part of relationships.
Jim Coan 25:55
It's amazing. There's this I've seen for years now, this, this kind of back door debate between a therapist named Esther Parral, who's always saying, you know, what we need is novelty, we need to, you know, recognize that a fact of our relationships is that sexually we become not that interesting to each other after a while and below. And on the other hand, there's Sue Johnson, who's saying, no, no, no, the key core mission for even a better sex life, his closeness, you know, emotional closeness and support bonding and these kinds of things. That's her whole, you know, that's her whole thing. It sounds to me, like, what you're suggesting here is both, that what you're, what you're doing is you're saying, let's grow our emotional bond, by becoming curious about each other as we discover new things and grow ourselves together. Yeah.
Arthur Aron 27:00
And of course, also, our relationship is growing. And also, if we grow in other ways, but associate that with the partner, that also makes the relationship better. So if we do something together, and it doesn't necessarily make me include them more, or anything like that, but here I've learned, we've learned something new and my partner was with me. And, you know, we've done you know that one of the classic experiments we did in lab experiments is we had couples crawl across a mat. And they, they were, they came in, they're randomly assigned. And they were told they were going to fill out some questionnaires do an activity we'd videotape them and but they didn't know is half of the couples were randomly assigned to do an exciting activity. They, their wrists and ankles, were tied together with velcro straps. And they had to push a foam roller across a long gym mat over a barrier, and come back within three minutes. And they had three or four tries to do that. And they couldn't use their teeth or their hands. And, you know, we've done a lot of pilot couples really enjoyed this. So it was exciting and interesting. Most of them, I want to do it right now. Yeah, that was fun. I've got a lot I could show you. But I'd love to share screen in any case, and then the control condition is each of them separately, went back and forth across the mat. And it was it was pleasant. They didn't mind seeing the other. But doing the exciting one together after me had a big effect, not just in their self report, but we had them have a conversation. One of the studies, we had them have a conversation afterwards. About You know, something like if you were given, you know, if you were given so much money to remodel your home, what would you do? You know, and what we found is we had people code the conversations who were didn't know who was in which experimental condition. And the conversations among the people who had done the exciting activity were much more positive and, you know, so forth than the ones in the, you know, merrily, pleasant condition. So, you know, it's watching your partner, do an activity while you're doing something that's I can't remember the details analysis study that we did about 30 years ago. But yeah, point is that self expanding alone needs to be it needs to be associated with a partner. Now, individual self expansion, if I'm self expanding through my work or from activities, up to a point that can be a good thing for the relationship as long as it doesn't separate me from the relationship if I'm feeling good and positive, and then I'm with my partner. And of course, supporting your partner self expansion or feeling supported, especially feeling supported by your partner, when you're self expanding, is huge. We've done a number of studies of that, where you, you're doing something your partner, you're trying to do something self expanding and you feel your partner's According to well doing, and that that's very positive for the relationship.
Jim Coan 30:05
Well, it's one of millions. Oh, go ahead.
Arthur Aron 30:08
One of the things that Jen. Jen Tomlinson, it's done with collaborators is to look at the effect of supporting your partner, when they've retired, supporting them to do new, interesting, exciting activities. And, you know, even on their own for retirement has a huge effect on the quality of the retirement and the quality of the relationship,
Jim Coan 30:33
I'm sure, I mean, one of the things, you know, you mentioned this measure that you have earlier, the the inclusion of the other and self scale, yes, just want to describe that, for me, this is a series of, of overlapping circles that goes from two circles that don't overlap at all to two circles that are very substantially overlapped and all the spaces in between and, and the more overlapped you are, the more you reporting, that you are, you and your partner are sort of overlapped, you're, you're the same person, more or less. Yeah, and I love this scale. And I just want to say with you on screen, how much I love the scale. I have my my, in my graduate work with LISI crest at the University of Arizona, I had a minor in measurement. And this is my favorite scale scale because of the semantic differential between the items on the scale, the overall meaning of the scale, it is absolutely crystal clear to people what you mean with this scale? And it is that's such a triumph.
Arthur Aron 31:46
Well, we were lucky to develop it. I don't remember how we did it. But we had fun coming up with it.
Jim Coan 31:52
Well, everybody understands it. And the question that I have the reason I wanted to go through that little review is these exercises that you talked about, you know, self expanding? And, you know, being curious with your partner doing exciting things together, not alone necessarily. Do they move people on this scale? Oh, yeah. No. Yeah.
Arthur Aron 32:16
I mean, of course, the thing is that the scale is so highly associated with how satisfied you are overall, in a relationship right now in love, you are not quite the same. So it's not surprising that anything that would increase satisfaction or love would also increase closeness. And anything that would increase closeness would increase satisfaction and love, they tend to be highest. That's true. So it's a little hard to sort them out. I mean, there are some studies that find some differences. For example, you've probably heard of, you know, you probably know, my best friend's procedure were in about four years. This is the other thing I wanted to talk to you. This is the other thing that made me think of you instantly when I thought about curiosity. Yeah, well, there's what's called the 30s, when the media has come to be called the 36 questions, yes. And it's a way to develop closeness strongly in a short period of time that we developed for use in the lab. Because if you want to look at the effect of closeness, and you just take people who are close versus not, they have different histories, they've chosen each other. So we wanted to be able to in a short amount of time randomly assigned pairs of people could be close or not. And so we developed this procedure and in about, you know, using the overlapping circle measure in about 45 minutes. During the procedure, people reported being as close to the person they did it with his, you know, almost as closest to the closest person in their life. It's ingenious to study very powerful, it doesn't necessarily last that long. But you know, the New York Times article that made this so famous to the general public, and it's been used widely in research as a tool, which we've tended for, talked about using it to fall in love. Now, it wasn't designed to fall that was designed to create closeness. But of course, closeness can help that rich Fletcher who was interested in the issue of couples having couple friendships. And and that's known from lots of research to be a good thing for couples. And what's the direction of causality? Is it the couples who are happier, more likely to have couple friends, a couple of friends are more likely to make you happy. So he used our procedure, where he had two couples do this as a force of each of the four answered each question. And what he found is that it really got them a lot closer to each other. Now, we then later I collaborated with him later on some research in which we compared a couple doing it alone, just the two of them versus two couples doing it. And what we found is that either way, there's a good substantial increase in closeness to your partner, although it's a little stronger. Surprisingly, when these are established relationships when to couples, but passionate love actually increased more for the couples much more than closeness. But towards your partner, when you're doing this as two couples is something I strongly recommend is, you know, my wife and I, we hadn't done this in years. So you know, sort of we'd never done it with another couple. So when the, when the pandemic started, we said, what can we do with Zoom? It'd be interesting. And so we had a couple of we didn't know really well. And we did this with them by zoom, as a foursome. And it really was great. We had a great effect on us.
Jim Coan 35:38
Are these questions really available someplace?
Arthur Aron 35:41
Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you look up the 36 questions, 36 questions, they'll be out there. Yeah, they're there on the web. And people are made, you know, sets of cards about them and stuff like that. Basically, the idea is they move you from being gradually from questions that are sort of, you know, mundane, not mundane, exactly, but not very deep. The questions that are deeper and deeper, and yeah, they also throw in a couple of other items along the way. Again, some items after a while, there's a question, you know, name some things you've noticed about your partner that you have in common. As I mentioned earlier, thinking you have things in common matters actually doesn't, we don't have any questions, you don't mean, some things you don't have in common. And then the other row, in his name, some things that you've noticed, that you like about your partner, or the other person, you know, the, this turns out enormously important in falling in love and in forming relationships is to think the other person likes you. And I think that's because it's a sign that the chance of expanding is much greater. They like, you know, into including.
Jim Coan 36:52
So if I could, if I could just sort of summarize this a little bit, yes. You've got this basic motivational principle that has you seeking to expand what you're capable of, and what you know, and there's obvious survival implications for that. And your research, best way to do that, with that, and your resources and your resources, the best way to do that is socially, because other people are also doing that, and they come with their whole collection of things, right. So in order to, to learn about them, and their resources, which, let's just suppose is almost synonymous with them becoming exciting as potential self explained expansion partners.
Arthur Aron 37:41
I think it's also a feeling they're learning about you. Feeling they're learning about you? Yes, of course. You know, it's not just including the partner itself, it's thinking the partners, including you, in the self matter hugely to me, yeah, the research on that. And, and one of the things that you used to think it was entirely self disclosure, when we started this, you know, it was mainly pushing it. But since then, Harry Reese, and others have shown a huge, important practice thing and connecting with people and getting close is feeling the others being responsive to you, that they understand you, right, they validate that they care about you. And so this self disclosure of stuff gives them an opportunity to say something, you know, sort of spontaneous, it's likely to happen that they're going to show responsiveness that you feel.
Jim Coan 38:30
it reminds me too, that one of the one of the key indicators or one of the key risk factors for loneliness, or even in men suicide is feeling useless. Feeling not needed. Feeling not required to some for someone else's well being is is a big risk factor. I didn't know that. That makes good sense. Makes good sense, right? It all sort of starts to fold in together, but then taking from you know, establishing closeness um, you've also provided us with this great work looking at how we maintain that closeness at least potentially how it may be some couples just do it and we don't have the causal arrow going in the right direction but I think that you have voted with your feet a little bit here Art by doing this exercise with that other couple, for example, and doing some of this stuff with your own wife.
Arthur Aron 39:28
We do basically everything anytime we hear about something in the media, you know, or in the mean that the media when we hear about something from research article, you know, we follow all the research on relationships that improves relationships, we act on it immediately. Yeah, you know, we both follow it she collaborates with me on my research and I collaborated with her on her so I mean, another great thing people do to make their relationship better is called capitalization to Yes, yeah. Is to, you know, celebrate your partner successes. And I remember the first time I read that Elaine was out. And we had submitted a little earlier a paper, a review paper of her research on a highly sensitive person, which I was a co author on, but she was really the main author. And we submitted it to a very high level journal, I thought her chances of acceptance were very slim. And I was home when the email came in, she was out saying the editors loved it. The reviewers loved it. They only wanted some minor modifications, they were going to publish it. So I made a poster of that email and put it on the front door. Oh, wow, we had a great night. And that is fabulous. But yeah, so you know, again, whatever we read about that's useful. We try to take advantage of for our own relationship. And I think, you know, that's an advantage of being a relationship researcher.
Jim Coan 40:55
Well, and in some ways, it reminds me of being a researcher in general, I mean, you know, when when I was doing my handling experiments, and I've done so many of them now, because I'm so afraid to do anything. But the, one of the first things I thought of was, well, what if, you know, what if we, what if we're putting the other person in danger? What if we put the hand holder in danger? And what we found was that if the person supporting you was something you you knew well and had a relationship with, then your, your brain responded as if it was you? Yeah, man. All over the place, not just like in the amygdala, or like, like the whole thing, like a machine learning device, we'd have a hard time knowing who the threat was directed at. But if it was a stranger, that wasn't the case at all?
Arthur Aron 41:48
Well, yeah, I didn't absolutely mind blowing, you know, that study? Yeah, please send it to me,
Jim Coan 41:55
I will send it to you. It is. We've replicated it now twice. And it's, it's really looking like, this is not what you what you pioneered is not we're talking that this is not a metaphor. This is not, you know, you know, a way for us to understand, you know, how people work. This is literally true, I think that however, the brain creates a subjective experience of a self, which is an activity after all of neurons moving through time. Yeah, um, the way that we establish a relationship, what that subjective experiences of relationship is the grafting of them onto our, our, that representation that we create, what a sound is, yeah,
Arthur Aron 42:45
we did a study years and years ago, where cut where individuals in the scanner, who are looking at what hearing names of a neutral person or a close friend, and then we looked at the correlation of the or of themselves, they were using their own name to the correlation of the pattern of brain activations for the self versus the close friend, for the overall mean. Yeah,
Jim Coan 43:13
I know this paper. Yeah, yeah. So you know,
Arthur Aron 43:17
it's that same idea. I mean, what you've done is even much more powerful, but it's a very direct sort of thing. Yeah,
Jim Coan 43:26
this is this is a physical property of our biology, that we incorporate the other into the self. And that's how we know that they're special. And how we also know that they know that we're special to them. And that's part of that, that reciprocation of both it's both ways.
Arthur Aron 43:45
Yes. To some extent, if we're attracted to someone, and don't even have a relationship with them yet. We still include them to some extent in the self.
Jim Coan 43:53
Oh, yeah. I, you know, I had a conversation, one of the little known factoids of my life is that for about 10 years, in my younger days, I was the, the webmaster for Randy Newman, the recording artist, Randy Oh, yeah. And I got to know him fairly well. And one time we were talking about fans, and he said that one of the most disconcerting thing about being a famous person is that you meet people who have poured over your body of work in such detail, that you are like a family member to them. You're you are a close person to them, and yet you've never seen them before in your entire life. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, to some extent, you know, Socrates is part of myself, you know, absolutely. We talked about this in the I teach a course that you're on the neuroscience of social relationships, and we spend a fair amount of time on your self expansion work, and we invariably discuss how people Self expand with characters and literature with superheroes and movies. You know, this is part of their appeal. You know, they appeal to us because they touch. They touch important aspects of our lives that we resonate. But, yeah, yeah. Um, Art I don't know if I have a lot more. I mean, I could do this all day, but we're going to wrap it up here. Um, thank you so much for talking with me yet again.
Arthur Aron 45:36
Well, thank you. It's such a pleasure. You're so good at doing this and feel so, you know, enriched by the process even think,
Jim Coan 45:44
Oh, terrific. Well, a nothing is true for me. And I will send you those papers, please. And we'll talk again soon. Okay. Thank you, Jim, so much.
Outro 45:58
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