Arthur Aron
Arthur Aron is a psychologist and the first author of "The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: a procedure and some preliminary findings", published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 1997. The procedure in that paper is widely known as the 36 questions. On the paper he is listed at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Who they are
Aron studies close relationships. The 1997 paper was written with Melinat, E. N. Aron, Vallone and Bator, and its procedure is widely used for creating closeness between people who have just met.
This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.
Key papers
The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness (1997), with Melinat, E. N. Aron, Vallone and Bator. Pairs of strangers spent 45 minutes on a set of questions that asked for progressively more personal answers, along with relationship-building tasks. In the first study they reported feeling closer than pairs who spent the same time on small-talk questions.
Key ideas
The central idea is that closeness can be built by structure. The questions escalate slowly, and each partner discloses in turn, so every revelation arrives in a setting where it fits. That pacing is what separates the procedure from oversharing, and it matches later work by Susan Sprecher and Stanislav Treger showing that taking turns at disclosure builds more attraction than one person talking first.
Sources
- 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. doi:10.1177/0146167297234003