Mapping the Road to Splitsville
For twenty years, John Gottman has been studying marriages. This University of Washington psychology professor has snooped around spouses, making note of what they do, what they say, even what they excrete. He's been looking for what predicts whether a given couple is headed for divorce.
Hordes of studies have concerned marital splits, but nearly all are attempts to measure the effects of divorce. According to the article in the University of Washington alumni magazine from which I found out about Gottman's work, he identified 1200 published studies on the subject. Of those, only four involved long-term monitoring before as well as after divorce. Not one involved observations of marriage partners as they interacted.
That was the area in which he decided to concentrate. His idea of observation, however, wasn't merely watching and listening while couples sat across from him in an office. He took blood and urine samples, analyzing them for the tell-tale presence of hormones indicating stress. He worked with couples for years, and he devised a psychology lab that looks just like a comfy apartment, suitably appealing for Seattle residents.
The nice-looking apartment, complete with waterfront views and a state-of-the-art microwave oven, is also equipped with three wall-mounted television cameras capable of taping every twitch and hiccup of the apartment's occupants. Mirrors are one-way glass backed by note-taking observers. The bathroom has a collector, not a flusher, for urine.
Participants know about all these invasions of privacy. They are paid for their time, which usually begins on Sunday morning and runs through to Monday morning. The observers leave and the television cameras turn off at 10 p.m., so participating couples don't have their bedroom behavior monitored. The high-tech Peeping Toms studying them have found they usually can learn quite enough by watching their study subjects get through an ordinary day as if they were at home.
The couples under observation are encouraged to do whatever they would normally do on a Sunday--work or laze around, listen to music or watch television. One of the things most couples do is read the Sunday paper, and Gottman's team found much diagnostic behavior in that simple act. For example, couples often give one another cause to complain ("Hey, you grabbed the sports section"). The researchers take note when complaint escalates to criticism ("You are quick to do things without asking how I feel") and insult ("You're an unfeeling, greedy, self-centered person"). It's no surprise that the researchers predict real trouble for the marriage if this mountain-from-molehill process happens frequently, especially if the attacked partner won't communicate with the attacker.
Other findings in the study are more unexpected. Gottman found that facial expressions help predict the likelihood of divorce. If the wife's expression is one of disgust or the husband's is of fear during an escalation from complaints, the marriage is in serious trouble. Also significant are phony smiles, where the mouth turns up but the eyes stay uninvolved.
It's unhealthy for the marriage when a spouse (almost invariably the husband) "stonewalls"--when he can't deal with an emotional situation and tries to turn to stone, holding his head immobile and neck rigid, avoiding eye contact and speech. Gottman found that stonewalling men can make themselves sick. Falling into such behavior predicts, with a high degree of accuracy, a decline in the men's physical health over the ensuing four years. Gottman also found--brace yourself--that men who did housework were far healthier after four years than men who didn't.
The research is paying off: Gottman has been able to predict, with 95 percent accuracy, which couples in his study will be in divorce court within three years. His knowledge of what predicts divorce, he hopes, will lead to practical tools to help prevent divorce someday.
