… and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!

Please scroll down under the video for more…

In the message I delivered on Sunday 7th April 2019, I made mention of the work of a marriage researcher by the name of Dr. John Gottman. Some people expressed interest in getting further information.

Imagine someone so painstaking as to do the following: to study over 3,000 married couples over a 30-year period; to video record their conversations and assign an emotional code (e.g. anger, sadness, surprise, annoyance, etc) to every frame of the video for later analysis; to monitor two channels of electrocardiogram for each person; to analyse their urine samples for stress hormone levels; to analyse their blood samples to test for immune function; and to collate this mountain of data in order to test for patterns and correlations, seeking the answer to the ultimate question… what makes a marriage succeed, and what makes it fail?

Happily, it is not necessary for us to know anything about this mountain of data, because Gottman has managed to distill down the very essence of what is important, leaving aside that which is not. So successful has Gottman been in extracting the essentials for what makes a marriage work, that simply by listening to a couple speak with each other for 15 minutes, he can predict with over 90% accuracy whether their marriage will succeed or fail. The rather dry-witted Gottman admits that this facility of his has markedly reduced the number of dinner party invitations he now receives.

You may also want to click on the following YouTube link where you can watch the video presentation where you can also choose to watch it in a mini player, theater mode or full screen!
https://youtu.be/AKTyPgwfPgg

You may also want to check out one of Gottman’s books which has much more detail:
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/the-seven-principles-for-making-marriage-work-by-john-gottman-and-nan-silver-9780553447712

Michael D