Even people in the best relationships have arguments. But mathematicians have found that the way you argue can reveal your chances of success as a couple.<\/p>\n
Over a number of years, psychologist John Gottman recorded hundreds of married couples in conversation with each other, asking them to discuss the most contentious issue in their relationship. Gottman\u2019s team came up with a way to measure, quantify and record everything that transpired – their blood pressure, their skin conductivity and their heart rate, as well as the sentiment of what was actually said. With just these few measurements, the team could predict whether or not a particular couple was likely to get divorced with up to 90% accuracy.<\/p>\n
They found that couples in a good relationship held a deep-seated positive view of one another and the language they used in their arguments reflected that. They would dismiss negative behavior as out of the ordinary: \u201cShe\u2019s just tired,\u201d or, \u201cThey\u2019ve been really stressed at work recently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Couples in a relationship that was headed for break-up were the opposite. They held a negative belief and used bad behavior to reinforce this opinion. \u201cYou\u2019re always like this,\u201d or, \u201cSee! You\u2019re so selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the insights go beyond mere statistics. Because when Gottman teamed up with mathematician James Murray, they were able to translate their findings into a mathematical model. The model predicted that it\u2019s the spirals of negativity you need to watch out for in a relationship, and particularly something called the \u201cnegativity threshold.\u201d This is how negative one partner needs to be before provoking a strong reaction in the other.<\/p>\n
I always thought that good relationships were about compromise and giving each other room to be yourself – so you might think it was the couples that could let things go (the ones with a high negativity threshold) that did well. But the team found that the exact opposite was true. It was the couples with the low negativity threshold that had the best chance of staying together in the long run – those who weren\u2019t afraid to speak their minds. These couples continually resolve and repair small issues in their relationship, never letting small things build up to the point where they explode.<\/p>\n
So communicate positively, openly and honestly. Who knew math could give you such a nice way to live?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even people in the best relationships have arguments. But mathematicians have found that the way you argue can reveal your chances of success as a couple. Over a number of years, psychologist John Gottman recorded hundreds of married couples in conversation with each other, asking them to discuss the most contentious issue in their relationship. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2637,363,26,68,3574,1019,55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}