John Gottman

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–Madison.

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.

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.