(2003-05-31) Gottman Marriage Math

Summary of John Gottman's book Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models. ISBN:0262072262 "I believe it was Lord Rutherford who said, If you need to use statistics, then you should design a better experiment," says Mr. James Murray. "Statistics will just give you the bare facts. If you want to understand why a dynamic system behaves as it does, then you need to use nonlinear tools."... For example, the husband in a "validating" couple tends to be strongly influenced (in a negative direction) by his wife's negative behavior: That line has a slope of 0.31. The husband in a "conflict avoiding" couple, on the other hand, actually tends to behave slightly more positively when his wife is negative: That line has a slope of -0.05... Both "validating" couples and "conflict avoiding" couples tend to have marriages that are stable and long lasting. Couples are in trouble, though, when they have mismatched influence functions. Consider the "hostile detached" couple, where the slopes for the husband's and the wife's influences look very different. When the husband behaves positively, he has almost no impact (slope of 0.02) on his detached wife.