Month: December 2022

During the podcast, Adam Grant requested his guests – the Gottmans – to share examples of how they would resolve conflicts. And boy did they provide some funny yet eye-opening versions.

Without going into the examples here though, even better is how Adam summarized everything beautifully at the end. Here it is, verbatim:

I came into this conversation thinking the Gottmans’ secret sauce must be their knowledge from research and therapy. Now, I believe it's something more: their deliberate practice. It's like they've been training for the Conflict Olympics. They're not just coaches watching other people's highlight reels and bloopers. They're professional arguers. They practice fighting. They review their game tape afterward. Amazing. There's a lot of evidence that what hurts relationships is not arguing frequently. It's arguing poorly, and watching the Gottmans convinces me that the best way to get better at fighting is to do it more, and then debrief on what went well and how you could have handled it more effectively. That way, instead of duking it out to try to win the argument, you're on the same side, trying to improve the argument, together. I think we should all give this a whirl, and I know where I'm gonna start. 

Continuing from yesterday, the Gottmans talk about an interesting concept. The “4 horsemen” is a term coined by John and Julie Gottman to refer to four common behaviors that are predictors of relationship failure. These behaviors are:

Criticism: This involves attacking someone’s character or personality, rather than focusing on a specific behavior or issue. For example, instead of saying “I don’t like it when you leave dirty dishes in the sink,” a person might say “You are so lazy and inconsiderate.”

Contempt: This involves putting the other person down or mocking them in a hostile way. For example, using sarcasm or eye-rolling to show that you think the other person is stupid or unworthy of respect.

Defensiveness: This involves avoiding responsibility for your own actions and trying to shift blame onto the other person. For example, instead of acknowledging that you made a mistake and apologizing, you might say “I only did it because you always…” or “It’s not my fault, it’s yours.”

Stonewalling: This involves shutting down or withdrawing from the conversation, either physically or emotionally. For example, not responding to the other person’s comments, or walking out of the room without saying anything.

Pretty cool way of dissecting relationships, and especially what can go wrong!

In a cool new podcast by Adam Grant, he interviews John and Julie Gottman. The two are psychologists who have been studying healthy relationships for over four decades. They co-founded the Gottman Institute, and have written numerous bestselling books together.

They discuss their famous study on predicting divorce rates in the podcast episode. I first thought, “what? Predicting divorce? How is that even possible? Are they using Vedic astrology?” But no, it was a proper study!

They had couples come into their lab and talk about the issues in their marriage, and were able to predict their divorce rates with astonishing accuracy by coding the little signals they sent each other back and forth. They synchronized the video time code to physiological measures from each person, looking at heart rate, how much they sweat from their hands, respiration, blood velocity, gross motor movement, and the emotions that the couples were displaying.

Almost shockingly (to me!), they could account for more than 90% of the variation in what happened to the couple, and could not only predict whether they would stay together or get divorced, but also predict when they would get divorced and how happily married they would be if they stayed together.

Incredible, and so did they have any more insights to offer? More tomorrow…