How Close Others Construct and Reconstruct Who We Are and How We Feel About Ourselves

T he self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships(Aron & Aron, 1986; Aron, Aron, & Norman, 2001) has two fundamentalprinciples: 1. Motivational principle: People seek to expand their potential efficacy-

that is, a major human motive is what has previously been described as effectance, competence, or exploration. (See especially, Aron, Norman, & Aron, 1998.)

2. Inclusion-of-other-in-the-self principle: One way people seek to expand the self is through close relationships, because in a close relationship the other’s resources, perspectives, identities, and self-soothing and self-exciting capacities are experienced, to some extent, as one’s own (as “included in the self”). (See especially, Aron, Mashek, & Aron, 2004.)

In this chapter we first review each of these aspects of the model and then suggest some possible implications of this model for (1) the content and structure the self-concept and (2) how one feels about that self-concept (one’s self-esteem). A final section explores implications for some major theoretical perspectives relevant to the self.