John Gottman

John Gottman
Born	John Mordechai Gottman (1942-04-26) April 26, 1942 Dominican Republic
Education	Fairleigh Dickinson University (BS) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS) University of Wisconsin (MA, PhD)
Known for	Cascade Model of Relational Dissolution
Spouse	Julie Schwartz Gottman
Children	Moriah Gottman
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology
Institutions	University of Washington
Website	www.gottman.com

John Mordechai Gottman (born April 26, 1942) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on divorce prediction and marital stability through relationship analyses. Gottman's work is centered on the field of relationship counseling: enhanced relationship functioning and mitigation of behaviors detrimental to human relationships. Gottman's work has also contributed to the development of important concepts on social sequence analysis.

In 1996, Gottman co-founded and led The Gottman Institute alongside his wife, psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman. Together, they are the co-founders of Affective Software Inc., a program seeking to make marriage and relationship counseling procedures more accessible to a broader audience.

Personal life

John Gottman was born on April 26, 1942, in the Dominican Republic to Orthodox Jewish parents. His father was a rabbi in pre-World War II Vienna. Gottman was educated in a Lubavitch Yeshiva Elementary School in Brooklyn. Gottman practices Conservative Judaism, keeps kosher (follows Jewish dietary laws) and observes Shabbat.

In 1987, he married Julie Schwartz, a psychotherapist. His two previous marriages had ended in divorce. He has a daughter named Moriah Gottman. John and Julie Gottman live in Washington state.

Education and work experience

John Gottman received his bachelor's degree in Mathematics-Physics from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1962. In 1964, he earned his master's in Mathematics-Psychology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a second master's degree in Clinical Psychology-Mathematics in 1967, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin.

At Fairleigh Dickinson University, Gottman worked as an instructor for the mathematics department, a research assistant for the department of physics, and a researcher for the school of engineering. At the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, he worked as a computer programmer and mathematician. He was a program evaluator and research designer for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. In 1981, Gottman became a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. Additionally, he was a professor of psychology at the University of Washington for 16 years. Since 2002, Gottman, now an emeritus professor of psychology at UW, has served as the executive director for the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle.

Awards and honors

Gottman has been the recipient of four National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Awards: the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Distinguished Research Scientist Award, the American Family Therapy Academy Award for Most Distinguished Contributor to Family Systems Research, the American Psychological Association Division of Family Psychology, Presidential Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Research Contribution and the National Council of Family Relations, 1994 Burgess Award for Outstanding Career in Theory and Research. In addition, Gottman was chosen as one of the Psychotherapy Networker's Top 10 Most Influential Therapists of the past quarter-century.

In 2021, Gottman received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Works

Gottman has published over 190 papers, and is the author or co-author of 40 books, notably:

• The Marriage Clinic (W.W. Norton, 1999), W W Norton page
• – a New York Times bestseller
• Gottman, John; Gottman, Julie Schwartz (2015). 10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Critiques

Gottman has been criticized for describing his work as being able to accurately predict divorce. Generally, this type of work involves simply fitting statistical models to a data set, not making predictions about events in the future. In 2001, professor Richard E. Heyman from New York University analyzed 15 divorce prediction models and questioned their validity due to problems with overfitting and small sample sizes (n = 60 couples in Gottman's 1998 study). Heyman argued that a 90% prediction may actually mean much less when considering the possibility of false positives and the low base rates of divorce. He also argued that it is inappropriate to make claims of "predictive power" without validating the model on independent samples. Heyman showed his points by creating a divorce prediction model with a data set, and demonstrated its low validity when the above considerations are tested. Gottman never published a reply to this critique. Journalist Laurie Abraham also disputed the prediction power of Gottman's method. Abraham writes, "What Gottman did wasn't really a prediction of the future but a formula built after the couples' outcomes were already known. This isn't to say that developing such formulas isn't a valuable — indeed, a critical — first step in being able to make a prediction. The next step, however —one absolutely required by the scientific method— is to apply your equation to a fresh sample to see whether it actually works. That is especially necessary with small data slices (such as 57 couples), because patterns that appear important are more likely to be mere flukes. But Gottman never did that." The Gottman Relationship Institute claims that six out of the seven of Gottman's studies have been properly predictive, by a non-standard definition of prediction in which all that is required is that predictive variables, but not their specific relationship to the outcome, were selected in advance.

See also

• Thin-slicing
• Julie Shwartz Gottman

External links

• The Gottman Institute website
• The Mathematics of Love - An interview (Edge)
• An Interview with John Gottman (Psychotherapy.net)
• Gottman's Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work - Commentary from 50 Psychology Classics (2007)
• John Gottman: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child Archived 2017-08-29 at the Wayback Machine KUOW-FM Speaker Forum
• John Gottman : Couples workshop training first time in London United Kingdom in 2013