John Gottman, (* 1942) Ph.D. is known for his work on marital stability and relationship analysis through scientific direct observations. The lessons learned from this work represent a partial basis for the relationship counseling movement which is based on specific training and education of behaviors which aim to improve relationship functioning and the avoidance of those behaviors, shown by Gottman and researchers, to deteriorate human relationships.

Dr. Gottman claims to have developed a method that predicts with 90% percent accuracy which newlywed couples will remain married and which will divorce four to six years later. It is also 81% percent accurate in predicting which marriages will survive after seven to nine years. Dr. Gottman's prediction method is described in the book Blink and the television series The Human Face. Dr. Gottman's method relies on Paul Ekman's method of analyzing human emotion and microexpressions.

Dr. Gottman became a professor of psychology at the University of Washington.

Many of his books have been widely sold in the popular press. Examples include:

• The Relationship Cure,
• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,
• Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage,
• Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last
• The Marriage Clinic.

Contempt and marriage

In the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking author Malcolm Gladwell discusses John Gottman's theories of how to predict which couples will stay married. Part of Gottman's theory states that there are four major emotional reactions that are destructive to a marriage: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Among these four, Gottman considers contempt the most important of them all. ^[1]

References

1. ↑

External links

• The Gottman Institute
• Biography (Talaris)
• The Mathematics of Love - An interview (Edge)

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