Abstract:

Self-expansion theory mentions that people expand themselves by including the others’ resources, perspectives and identities into themselves to improve self-efficacy. As a new important focus of motivation researches, numerous studies have been conducted in the context of close relationships. Furthermore, most of researches about self-expansion are mainly based on self-expansion motivation and inclusion of others in the self, such as mate selection, relationship satisfaction, infidelity, relational dissolution and maintenance, according to the questionnaire and experiment. In the future, we should explore different types of close relationships and the mechanism of self-expansion in and out of close relationships, as well as the mutual effect between couples’ self-expansion.

Key words: self-expansion, close relationships, relationship satisfaction, infidelity