Press Releases on John Gottman’s research and on the Gottman Institute

You may read archived press releases by clicking on the various links below:

• marriage, couples and divorce prediction
• gay and lesbian couples
• families and parenting

Current Releases:

The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models

• John M. Gottman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Washington
• James D. Murray, Professor Emeritus, Department of Applied Math, University of Washington
• Catherine C. Swanson, Software Engineer, University of Washington
• Kristin R. Swanson, Senior Fellow in Pathology and Applied Math, University of Washington
• Rebecca Tyson, Research Scientist, University of Arizona

 (MIT Press, 2002)

“Divorce rates in the United States have reached epidemic proportions,” reports John Gottman, PhD. Without a theoretical understanding of the processes related to marital stability and dissolution, it is difficult to design and evaluate new marriage interventions. The Mathematics of Marriage provides the foundation for a scientific theory of marital relations. The book develops and applies a mathematical model using difference equations, fulfilling of the goal to build a mathematical framework for the general system theory of families first suggested by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1960s. 

The book presents a complete introduction to the mathematics involved in theory building and testing, and details the development of experiments and models. In one “marriage experiment,” for example, the authors explored the effects of lowering or raising a couple’s heart rates. Armed with their mathematical model, they were able to do real experiments to determine which processes were affected by their interventions. 

Applying ideas such as phase space, null clines, influence functions, inertia and uninfluenced and influenced stable steady states (attractors), the authors show how other researchers can use the methods to weight their own data with positive and negative weights. While the focus in on modeling marriage, the techniques can be applied to other types of psychological phenomena as well.

To read reviews and media releases on this book, please click on the following link: Reviews and Media