Closeness

Closeness Analyzed in Terms of Personal Impact

Interpersonal closeness has three distinct and important characteristics: First, it is a feeling of positive connectedness to one or more other persons. Second, it is an attitude embodying the same feelings of closeness and extending over a significant time period. And third, closeness may refer to the behavioral patterns that engender closeness. In this case, closeness presupposes the ability to interact regularly either face-to-face or via electronic means. Berscheid and her colleagues took the idea that when people are close they tend to have an impact on each other because they are interdependent—what person A does almost of necessity has an impact on what person B experiences and is likely to do and vice versa. Berscheid and colleagues asked the question, How does one best get at this kind of behavioral impact on feelings of closeness? They came up with three answers. They asked about the frequency of doing things together, the diversity or number of different things done, and the judgment of the strength of impact. Although each of these may affect felt closeness, they are not the same thing, and assessing each dimension separately seemed an important step to take. Berscheid and her colleagues named the inventory the Relationship Closeness [Page 216]Inventory (RCI). Their research, in several samples, established that diversity and frequency were somewhat more strongly correlated with each other than with judged strength of impact and that both diversity and strength were modestly predictive of enduring relationships among romantic couples. By combining all three aspects of measured closeness into a single index, researchers have been able to achieve a substantial predictiveness of relationship endurance among both women and men. The RCI is one of the standard instruments used in the field by researchers interested in assessing degree of closeness and its implications.

The Personal Interconnectedness View of Closeness

Not long after the work on the RCI was completed, Arthur and Elaine Aron proposed that the RCI could be supplemented by a novel but simple measure of the degree to which two (or more) persons feel themselves to be included in each other's worlds or have a sense of being interconnected with each other. A series of seven sets of two circles (or triangles) is presented to members of a couple, and each selects the pair that corresponds to their degree of felt inclusion in each other's worlds. Circles that are merely touching but not overlapping at all represent acquaintances. Those in which the circles have substantial degrees of overlap would be indicative of including each other in one's worlds and, hence, of being especially close. Total overlap of circles would indicate a complete absorption of self and other into a oneness. The Arons gave the scale the name pictorial Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale (IOS). In an ingenious set of seven studies, they established that the IOS brought a distinct and important contribution to the measurement and predictive power of closeness measures. One important conclusion of their several studies was that it is necessary to distinguish the concepts of felt or subjective closeness from the concept of behavioral closeness as measured by the RCI. Even though the RCI was initially developed by having participants select their closest relationships, it is not primarily a measure of felt closeness. The IOS relates both to the subjective sense of closeness as well as to the behavioral sense of closeness assessed by the RCI. The IOS was a better predictor of a 3-month relationship stability than the RCI, but they both contributed strongly to the felt distress a person would have if the relationship were to break up. An interesting gender difference came to light in these studies. For men, the longer they are together with their wives, the greater their closeness—both as measured by the IOS and the strength component of the RCI—but not for women. This finding fits with data suggesting that women form friendship and romantic bonds more quickly than men, but no firm interpretation has been provided.

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