John M. Gottman: Researcher on Marital Interactions

6/23/2005

I need to spend some time on this author/researcher. His earliest work was actually in child development and then he branched out full time doing research on marriage and marital conflict. He has several articles published in peer reviewed journals and is probably one of the most respected authors in the field, today.

Unlike most other authors of relationship books like John Gray, John Gottman did (and still does, if you click the link) actual experimental research and set up laboratories to collect actual data instead of merely relying on questionnaires and interviews. His research is the most thorough in the field. This is no scientific lightweight with degrees in both psychology and in mathematics from MIT. So let's talk a bit about what he did (and is still doing) and why it is significant to bloggers who are in relationships.

His work is primarily done with couples of all types (he's actually doing a study now with gay couples) of all ages in various stages. Many of his studies were longitudinal, lasting several years. He set up a laboratory where each member of a couple would be hooked up to various instruments measuring heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductivity and even the chairs they sat on measured fidgeting. It was essentially a sort of lie detector apparatus. He also videotaped each person and scored the facial features and tone of voice as well as the actual words using coded responses classifying these as neutral, hostile, avoidant or friendly.

Before entering the lab, the couple would fill out a questionnaire which identified major sources of conflict. Once in the lab and hooked up with cameras rolling the couple was essentially instructed to discuss one of these hot topics for 15 minutes. They were told to, in fact, fight and argue. After just a few minutes most couples forgot all about the wires and cameras and were in the midst of heated exchanges. Gottmen repeated this with hundreds of couples including a large cohort of engaged couples. Based on his research, he became adept at predicting which marriages would end in divorce within 5 years with over 80% accuracy based on just one 15 minute session. He and his team have replicated these studies many times. He would simply watch the tapes, look at the data and then make a prediction. Five years later, he would contact the couples and lo and behold, Most of those he predicted for divorce, did. When a follow up was done 10 years later, his reliability shot up to 90%.

While Gottman's research is good for predictive reliability, it rates pretty poorly as far as treatment. In fact, there are no well-established treatments that can reliably change the trajectory of a failing marriage. By the time most couples end up in therapy, they are fairly too far gone.

The basis of Gottman's books is mainly in prevention and in looking what the differences were between successful couples and those who ended up in divorce court. He basically asserts that if unsuccessful couples could learn what the successful were doing, they'd be better off. A good and sound theory, but it does not take into account the temperment of each individual. I'm still waiting to see a good and sound experimental design that shows a clear functional relationship between a treatment and positive outcome.

Gottman's research touched on another area near and dear to many hearts. Namely the effect of conflict on children and parenting styles. This time, he did the experiment on the couples as outlined above, and then immediately afterward, had the parents parent their child.

In the parenting condition, parents and their young child (ages 2-5) were placed in a room with two different shelves of toys. On one shelf, there were alll sorts of cool toys, designed to appeal to young children. On the other shelf were toys that were deemed to be more bland and boring. The parents were instructed to wait in the room with their child for 30 minutes. They told the parents that the chilld could play with any of the toys from the boring shelf, but were not to disturb anything on the cool toy shelf as that was to be used for another experiment. Now the stage is set, and cameras are rolling. No wires this time, but parents were scored behaviorally similarly to the previous argument condition, plus scored on how they cooperated and interracted with the child. Of course the kids wanted the cool toys and the parents had to use their skills to keep the kids out of trouble.

Parents who did poorly in the argument condition also did poorly in the parenting condition. They were more likely to maintain their anger, act more harshly and aggressive towards their children and cooperate less with each other. No surprises there.

Gottman added one more condition to this experimental set. He had the young child play with another child independently who was identified as a best friend and recorded the interraction using audiotape. Children of parents who were most likely to divorce were less cooperative with their friends, tended to be more verbally agressive or interacted less overall with their friend.

If you think about it, it makes sense that children model their parents, especially when it comes to social and emotional interractions. By the time they go to school, they've already acquired a great deal of their social and emotional behavioral repertoires. Other researchers have found that conflict has an adverse affect upon children mostly when they don't get to see the resolution of it. Conflict is not necessarily bad and may in fact be good if it teaches children perseverence, problem solving, resiliance, forgiveness and cooperation. But these things must be modeled, if not explicitly taught, for children to acquire and master these skills.