Practise including the other person in your self-concept
Close relationships develop when you genuinely incorporate the other’s perspectives and resources into how you think — not just spend time with them.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Close relationships develop when you genuinely incorporate the other’s perspectives and resources into how you think — not just spend time with them.
- Why it works: Aron’s model holds that closeness is operationally defined as the degree to which a person incorporates the other into their self-concept — borrows their perspectives, skills, and identity. This is not metaphor: research using reaction-time paradigms shows people are slower to distinguish self from close-other attributes the closer the relationship. Practices that deliberately invoke the other’s perspective strengthen this inclusion and deepen the experience of closeness.
- Evidence: Backed by observational / correlational evidence.
- Avoid: Assuming shared time automatically produces self-expansion — time together without genuine curiosity about the other’s distinct perspective does not produce the inclusion-in-self mechanism.
Why it works
Aron’s model holds that closeness is operationally defined as the degree to which a person incorporates the other into their self-concept — borrows their perspectives, skills, and identity. This is not metaphor: research using reaction-time paradigms shows people are slower to distinguish self from close-other attributes the closer the relationship. Practices that deliberately invoke the other’s perspective strengthen this inclusion and deepen the experience of closeness.
How to do it
- 1When facing a decision, deliberately invoke the perspective of a close person: "How would [name] see this situation?"
- 2Describe a close person’s strengths or capabilities as though they were resources you have access to.
- 3In conversation, look explicitly for what the other person knows or does well that you do not — and ask about it.
What the evidence says
ObservationalResearch using the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) scale found it to be a reliable predictor of relationship closeness, and experimental work found that people’s self-description processing is slower on attributes shared with close others, consistent with the self-incorporation mechanism.
Honest caveat: The self-incorporation mechanism is measured through reaction-time and self-report proxies; whether deliberate IOS-raising practices produce closeness has less direct study than the correlation evidence.
- — Aron, Aron & Smollan (1992), "Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Common mistake
Assuming shared time automatically produces self-expansion — time together without genuine curiosity about the other’s distinct perspective does not produce the inclusion-in-self mechanism.
IX Coach prompts perspective-taking exercises that ask you to actively describe a close person’s viewpoint on a situation you are navigating — building the inclusion-in-self mechanism through deliberate practice.
Practice this with IX Coach →