Falling in love: prospective studies of self-concept change

Two prospective, longitudinal studies examined the consequences of falling in love, focusing on predictions developed in the context of A. Aron and E. N. Aron's (1986, in press) self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships. In each study a sample with a high expected incidence of falling in love (first- and second-year undergraduates in the fall term) was tested 5 times over 10 weeks. At each testing participants indicated whether they had fallen in love and either made open-ended lists of self-descriptive terms (Study 1; N = 329) or completed standard self-efficacy and self-esteem measures (Study 2; N = 529). As predicted, after falling in love there was greater change and increased diversity of self-concept domains (Study 1) and increased self-efficacy and self-esteem (Study 2). Partial correlation analyses suggested that results in both studies were not due to mood change.