Aron's work focuses on the role, creation, and maintenance of friendship and intimacy in interpersonal relationships. He developed the
self-expansion model of close relationships; it posits that one of the motivations humans have for forming close relationships is self-expansion, i.e., "expansion of the
self", or
personal growth and development.
36 questions In 1997, Aron and his wife published an academic paper called
The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings, in which the appendix featured a set of 36 questions of increasing intimacy. Participants who were strangers to each other were grouped in pairs to ask each other the questions, and found afterwards to develop a stronger friendship and in some cases even a relationship. In January 2015,
New York Times columnist Mandy Len Catron posted the article "To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This", which listed them as the "36 questions that lead to love". The list has been used in hundreds of studies, to create closeness in a lab setting, to break down barriers between strangers, and improve understanding between police officers and community members. ==Personal life==