Arthur Aron - The 36 Questions That Lead to Love

Whether or not an individual is in a relationship, particular pairings of individuals in the relationship, and circumstances of relationship development become manipulated variables. Over a 45-min period subject pairs carry out self-disclosure and relationship-building tasks that gradually escalate in intensity. Study 1 found greater postinter- action closeness with these tasks versus comparable small-talk tasks. Studies 2 and 3 found no significant closeness effects, in spite of adequate power, for (a) whether pairs were matched for nondisagreement on important attitudes, (b) whether pairs were led to expect mutual liking, or (c) whether getting close was made an explicit goal. These studies also illustrated applications for addressing theoretical issues, yielding provocative tentative findings relating to attachment style and introversion/ extraversion.

Al core variable in the thriving study of the social psychology of close relationships is whether a subject is in such a relationship. So far, researchers have compared those in and not in close relationships, or those in relationships that are close to various degrees, using measures of degree of closeness (e.g., Aron, Aron, 8c Smollan, 1992; Berscheid, Snyder, 8c Omoto, 1989). But in all of these approaches, the existence of a close relationship, the characteristics of its members, or the circumstances under which the relationship developed are not subject to experimental manipulation.

This article presents a practical methodology for creating closeness in an experimental context, so that whether or not a subject is in a relationship, the particular pairings of individuals in the relationship, and the circumstances under which the relationship develops all become manipulated independent variables. That is, we have tried to make being in a relationship accessible to laboratory study and experimental manipulation in the same way as the minimal group paradigm, mood induction procedures, or self-esteem-lowering methods have opened up previously impractical research horizons.

Authors' Note: We are grateful to our many research assistants on these projects, including Stephanie Anderson, Jonathan Armstrong, Mark Baggett, Kimberly Chu, Ritsu Itoi, Tina Luu, Dori Morechower, Whitney Parker, Dianne Rossiter, Liz Shafton, Laura Steffen, Susanne Wald- man, and Julie Wilson. We also want to thank Drs. Merlynn Bergen and Gregory White for their substantial input on the preliminary studies. Some of these data were presented at the 1994 International Network on Personal Relationships Graduate Workshop, the 1994 Nag's Head Conference on Interaction Processes, and the 1994 International Conference on Personal Relationships. Address correspondence to Arthur Aron, Psychology Department, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500, E-mail aron@psych 1 .psy.sunysb.edu.

PSPB, Vol. 23 No. 4, April 1997 363-377

© 1997 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

The studies reported here examined the elements of the procedure we have developed for inducing closeness under controlled conditions and illustrated its applicability for testing theoretical issues that previously could be treated only with correlational data.

One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self-disclosure (e.g., Altman 8c Taylor, 1973; Berg & Clark, 1986; Collins & Miller, 1994; Derlega, Metts, Petronio, & Margulis, 1993; Dindia 8c Allen, 1995). The core of the method we developed was to structure such self-disclosure between strangers. We also incorporated two other well-substantiated findings in the attraction and relationship literature: (a) We matched individuals so they did not disagree about atti- tudinal issues of importance to them (e.g., Byrne, 1971; Rosenbaum, 1986) and (b) we created the expectation that each subject's partner would like him or her (e.g., Aron, Dutton, Aron, 8c Iverson, 1989). Finally, following the model used in other research areas (e.g., memory, perception), we made becoming close an explicit task. The studies reported here systematically address the usefulness of each of these key elements of the procedure (nature of the task, nondisagreement, expectation of mutual liking, and making closeness an explicit task).

The procedure we developed was to some extent inspired by what Collins and Miller (1994) call the acquaintance paradigm in the substantial body of experimental research on self-disclosure conducted mainly in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the present procedure clearly goes well beyond what was done in that line of research—which, of course, was not intended for the present purpose. Even in those few studies in which the partner was not a confederate, the procedures were typically brief, did not strongly engage the participant in an ongoing interaction, and did not involve the other aspects of our tasks. (Although these differences in procedure between our method and the acquaintance paradigm studies do not guarantee greater closeness as a result of our method, such a difference seems reasonable.)

We should also emphasize that the goal of our procedure was to develop a temporary feeling of closeness, not an actual ongoing relationship. This feeling we would associate with the Arons' (Aron et al., 1992; Aron, Aron, Tudor, 8c Nelson, 1991) definition of closeness as "including other in the self'—an interconnectedness of self and other. This feeling of interconnectedness is similar to what some researchers call intimacy. For example, Reis and Shaver (1988) emphasize that intimacy is a process in which each feels his or her innermost self validated, understood, and cared for by the other; McAdams's (1988) summary of the intimacy literature argued that most definitions of intimacy "converge on the central idea of sharing that which is inmostwith others" (p. 18). There are other meanings of closeness, such as Berscheid et al.'s (1989) definition that emphasizes behavioral interaction—amount of time together, shared activities, and mutual influence. Indeed, Aron et al. (1992) found that various measures of closeness have two latent dimensions of behaving close and feeling close. The former included the Berscheid et al. measures; the latter, a subjective measure of how close one feels to the partner and Sternberg's (1988) Intimacy Scale. (A measure based directly on including other in the self loaded on both dimensions.) Whereas behaving close in this sense could not really arise outside of a long-term ongoing relationship, it seemed to us that the subjective feeling of closeness, which is our focus, might well arise at least temporarily in a short-term interaction.

In the initial version of our procedure as we have developed it (Aron, Aron, Melinat, 8c Vallone, 1991), cross-sex stranger pairs carried out a series of self-disclo- sure and relationship-building tasks over a 1 V2-hr period while alone together in a comfortable room. Encouraged by high postexperiment ratings of closeness and anecdotal reports of the impact of the experience over the next few months (including one pair who married!), we adapted this task so that it could be carried out in a classroom situation, over a 45-min period, and with either same- or cross-sex pairings. In this way the procedure could be used more practically by researchers and with large numbers. Our initial results with this approach were also very promising.1

The present studies examined the utility of this approach as a research tool for exploring important questions in the area of close relationships. Thus these studies examined both the degree of closeness attained through this procedure and the relative

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