Arthur Aron: what the 36 questions really show about closeness

Who is Arthur Aron?

Arthur Aron was born on July 2, 1945. He earned his PhD in social psychology from the University of Toronto in 1970 and is now a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University, in New York State. For more than fifty years he has worked with his wife, the psychologist Elaine Aron, on a question that psychology long considered too vague to study: how two people become close, and why that closeness does us so much good.

Three of his projects escaped the lab. The suspension bridge study (1974), which made physiological arousal an ingredient of attraction. The self-expansion model (1986), which explains why love feels like growing. And the 36 questions (1997), which went viral in 2015 after a New York Times article, to the point that they are often described as “the recipe for falling in love.”

What matters for your relationship is less the recipe than the mechanism behind it: closeness can be built, through specific, reciprocal and gradual steps, and it is kept alive by shared novelty. That is what he showed with experimental methods, at a time when love was thought to be out of reach of experiments.

The central idea

For Arthur Aron, we have a fundamental desire for self-expansion: to widen what we know, what we can do, and the resources and perspectives we have access to. A close relationship is the fastest way to get there: when we love someone, we include the other in the self. Their experiences become a little bit ours, and their world is added to our own. That is the intoxication of the early days, and it has an explanation: we are growing very fast.

The flip side is just as revealing. Once we know the other person well, expansion slows down, and the settled couple gets bored. Not because love has faded, but because it is no longer growing. So the answer is not to get the past back, but to start expanding again, together.

The key concepts

Self-expansion

The model, formulated with Elaine Aron in 1986, says two things. First, we are motivated to make ourselves bigger. Second, a relationship is a privileged route: by becoming close to someone, we gain access to their resources, their perspectives, their identity. Initial attraction often goes to someone who promises a lot of expansion and seems within reach. Long-term satisfaction depends on the couple’s ability to keep offering expansion to each partner.

Including the other in the self

With Elaine Aron and Danny Smollan, he created a disarmingly simple measure in 1992: seven pairs of circles, from side by side to almost fully overlapping, one labeled “me,” the other “the other.” You pick the pair that looks like your relationship. This IOS scale (Inclusion of Other in the Self) predicts the stability of a couple surprisingly well, and it has since been used in hundreds of studies.

Gradual, reciprocal disclosure

This is the hidden principle of the 36 questions. Closeness grows when two people reveal themselves in turn, step by step, each a little more than the last: first tastes (“who would you like to have over for dinner?”), then memories, then fears and regrets. Three sets of twelve questions, in 45 minutes. The progression and the reciprocity matter as much as the content: it is a staircase, not a list.

Shared novelty and excitement

For established couples, Aron tested a hypothesis that follows from self-expansion: doing new and stimulating activities together should revive the relationship. Not “pleasant” ones: new ones. The link to the suspension bridge is direct: shared excitement, attributed to the couple, feeds attraction.

What the research says

Aron has a rare quality among the authors in this section: almost all his ideas were tested in controlled experiments, with a comparison condition.

• The suspension bridge (Dutton and Aron, 1974). In Vancouver, men were approached by a female interviewer, either in the middle of a vertiginous suspension bridge or on a low, stable one. The men on the suspension bridge wrote stories with more sexual content and called the interviewer more often afterward. Nothing of the kind happened with a male interviewer. Interpretation: the arousal caused by fear is reattributed to attraction.
• The 36 questions (Aron et al., 1997). Students who did not know each other were paired up and went through the three sets of questions for 45 minutes. At the end, they felt clearly closer than a pair who had simply made conversation. A notable detail: whether the pairs were matched on their opinions, or told that they would like each other, made no difference.
• Novel activities (Aron et al., 2000). In three experiments, couples did a seven-minute task together, either new and physical or mundane. The relationship quality they reported rose more after the new task, and boredom explained part of the link observed in surveys.
• The extensions. Slatcher (2010) had 60 couples go through the 36 questions on “double dates”: couples felt closer to the other couple, and closer to their own partner. A Canadian team showed in 2019 that self-expanding activities also go with more sexual desire.

What this shows: you can build closeness in a single session, and shared novelty does an established couple good. What it does not show: that 36 questions create love, or that the effect lasts without upkeep.

Limits and criticisms

The suspension bridge is the most fragile study. As early as 1977, researchers objected that the men knew perfectly well where their fear came from, and that a simpler explanation exists: the interviewer’s presence relieves the fear, which makes it pleasant. In 1979, Kenrick, Cialdini and Linder published four failures to replicate the effect. The idea that we “confuse” arousal with attraction is still appealing, but it is far less solid than its fame suggests.

The 36 questions have been misunderstood because of their success. The study measured closeness, not love; its participants were students, in a lab, just once; and the four minutes of eye contact were not part of it: they come from another line of research and were added by the 2015 article. The protocol creates a closeness comparable to that of an established relationship, not love at first sight.

Finally, the self-expansion model is more of a lens than a theory that is easy to disprove: almost anything can be read as expansion. The brain imaging studies Aron ran with Helen Fisher involve about fifteen people each. And most samples are North American, young and heterosexual. The mechanism is robust; its exact contours remain to be pinned down.

How MyLoveLab uses his work

The principle of the 36 questions, revealing yourself in turn and step by step, feeds the Trust and support dimension: it is how you rebuild damaged intimacy, or make up for years of “fine, and you?” Shared novelty and the boredom of settled couples are at the heart of the Intimacy and desire dimension. And the idea of a couple that grows or withers shapes the Shared project dimension: a project built together is the most lasting form of self-expansion.

We use his protocols at their true size: tools for creating closeness, to be repeated, not magic spells.

Further reading

• Love and the Expansion of Self: Understanding Attraction and Satisfaction · Book, 1986With Elaine Aron: the founding book of the self-expansion model.
• Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety · Article, 1974With Donald Dutton: the suspension bridge study, best read alongside its critiques.
• Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness · Scale, 1992The seven pairs of circles: the simplest measure of closeness there is.
• The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings · Article, 1997The article behind the 36 questions, with the full list in the appendix.
• Couples’ shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality · Article, 2000Experimental proof that shared novelty does an established couple good.

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Dutton, D. G. & Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 510-517.
2. Kenrick, D. T., Cialdini, R. B. & Linder, D. E. (1979). Misattribution under fear-producing circumstances: Four failures to replicate. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5(3), 329-334.
3. Aron, A. & Aron, E. N. (1986). Love and the Expansion of Self: Understanding Attraction and Satisfaction. Hemisphere.
4. Aron, A., Aron, E. N. & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596-612.
5. Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D. & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377.
6. Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C. & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples’ shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273-284.
7. Slatcher, R. B. (2010). When Harry and Sally met Dick and Jane: Creating closeness between couples. Personal Relationships, 17(2), 279-297.
8. Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Day, L. C., Bacev-Giles, C., Gere, J. & Impett, E. A. (2019). Broadening your horizons: Self-expanding activities promote desire and satisfaction in established romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(2), 237-258.

See the full bibliography