Predicting divorce in five minutes with 91% accuracy

John Gottman claims he can predict in five minutes—with 91 percent accuracy—whether a couple will eventually divorce. Gottman is the co-founder and co-director of the Gottman Institute, a research based organization that helps couples improve their marriage.

Gottman’s claim to fame was putting couples in a room, and video taping 57 couples interacting with each other. By observing their facial expressions and interactions, Gottman developed a system to predict which couples would divorce.

And he could do so with blinding accuracy. The group of therapists, counselors and others, could only predict the divorce possibility 53.8% of the time.

Specifically, he watches out for certain corrosive interactions that, left unchecked, will kill a relationship. He calls these the “Four Horsemen”: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

Since he published his research, some have been critical of his approach. His predictive model was developed looking backward. For the 1998 study, which focused on videotapes of 57 newlywed couples, he waited six years to check on their marital status and then created a computer model using the video data to “predict” what had already occured. “He asked the computer, in effect: Create an equation that maximizes the ability of my chosen variables to distinguish among the divorced, happy, and unhappy.”

Notwithstanding the criticisms of his prediction model, Gottman and his institute have certainly made significant contributions to the study of marriage and divorce.

Gottman continued his research and discovered two periods to be the “most critical for the survival of marriages: (a) the first seven years of marriage, during which half of all divorces are known to occur, and (b) the period during which the first child reaches 14 years of age, which has been suggested as a low point for marital satisfaction in the life course.”

The Institute has determined there are strong negative consequences to separation and divorce on the mental and physical health of both spouses. These include increased risk for psychopathology, automobile accidents, and physical illness, suicide, violence, and homicide. In children, marital distress and disruption were associated with depression, withdrawal, poor social competence, health problems, poor academic performance, and a variety of other difficulties.

Gottman offers weekend workshops in Seattle, Washington to help couples improve their marriage. He teaches seven principles to make marriage work. Workshops based on his research closer to North Carolina are available in the Washington, DC area.

Other couples retreats, marriage enrichment events and seminars include those offered by the North Carolina Baptists , the North Carolina National Guard, The Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, and others.

Certainly improving our marriages is a positive step toward curbing all those negative effects of divorce.