Including others in the self |
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| Authors: | Arthur Aron Tracy McLaughlin-Volpe Debra Mashek Gary Lewandowski Stephen C. Wright Elaine N. Aron |
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| Affiliation: | 1. State University of New York , Stony Brook, NY, USA;2. University of Vermont , Burlington, VT, USA;3. Monmouth University , West Long Branch, NJ, USA;4. University of California , Santa Cruz, CA, USA |
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| Abstract: | We propose that to some extent, people treat the resources, perspectives, and identities of close others as their own. This proposal is supported by allocation, attribution, response time, and memory experiments. Recently, we have applied this idea to deepening understanding of feeling “too close” (including too much of the other in the self leading to feeling controlled or a loss of identity), the effects of relationship loss (it is distressing to the extent that the former partner was included in the self, liberating to the extent that the former partner was preventing self-expansion), ingroup identification (including ingroup in the self), and the effect of outgroup friendships on outgroup attitudes (including outgroup member in the self entails including outgroup member's identity in the self). |
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