Aron, A., Aron, E. N., Tudor, M. & Nelson, G. (1991). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(2), 241–253.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
Self-expansion is the relational form of the owner’s “larger self” (CLAIM-491), and León (NOTE-1309) cites it for close-relationship we-ness.
Read in its place
The work cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand.
Branand, Mashek and Aron (NOTE-1276) give the paper’s thesis: in a close relationship each partner experiences the other’s “resources, perspectives, and identities” as to some extent their own, and the other’s outcomes are shared (p. 1). They give one result: in a me/not-me reaction-time task (Study 3), judging whether a trait describes oneself is slowed to the extent that the partner differs on it (p. 2). The task was later used to validate the IOS scale. The SEP entry quotes, from “Aron et al. 1980: 242”, that much cognition about a close other “is cognition in which the other is treated as self or confused with self”. That is probably this paper’s p. 242. Missing still: the resource-allocation studies, which the LIT summary reports from secondary knowledge, the perspective and memory studies, all designs and numbers, and whether the effects were separated from liking.