Talk:John Gottman

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 April 2021 and 23 July 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Olsena98.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled[edit]

This article seems to have a slight bias towards Gottman. More secondary sources need to be added, instead of relying fully on primary sources from Gottman. I also believe that there needs to be more critiques to Gottman's work added to this article.Sierra827 (talk) 04:47, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 September 2020 and 17 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AmandaBYUI.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion of Cascade Model of Relational Dissolution[edit]

I've made a substantial expansion of Gottman's cascade model including some specifics on the four tiers of this cascade. Feel free to contribute. It isn't perfect right now but it's a good start. More input will definitely be appreciated. I'll be making some more edits over the next week or two along with adding some sources. This is one of the most important theories that Gottman developed and warrants a little more space. Jamesna1 (talk) 16:25, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Imbalance of Wife's Role[edit]

Not sure the best way to start a thread on this, but can we acknowledge a seemingly cliche (and in this case, extraordinary) sexist disservice done here, by taking a married couple who are both researchers, both therapists, and have the same last name, and treating them as a single, adult, male? They have done all this work together, for decades, and somehow here is an article that doesn't even mention her in the introduction; look at her article, and most introductory sentences mention him. What next, with these situations?

Rather than "Gottman", this should be about "The Gottmans". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justapersona (talk • contribs) 17:45, 20 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that there should be more credit given, but at the same time maintaining a focus on John Gottman on this specific page, as it is about him. I did find it interesting, however, that on the John Gottman article, the picture is of both him and his wife, but on the Julie Schwartz Gottman page, the picture is only of her. I also noticed, however, that in his article, it says he co-founded the Gottman Institute and doesn't say who with. Then in her article, is says she co-founded it with John Gottman. It could be good to add her name on his page regarding the founding of the Gottman Institute.Olsena98 (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Claims of predictive accuracy[edit]

I'm not the person who tagged this--I'm just weighing in.

In fairness, it's a fact that Gottman makes that claim (he says 91 percent, actually.) I agree it's highly disputable that he gets the results he claims, but the tagged sentence is factually accurate because all it says is that Gottman makes this claim.

The next sentence, "is also 81% percent accurate in predicting which marriages will survive after seven to nine years," I do have a problem with. I would like to see attribution to a credible source.

Question. Is it true that Gottman's formula actually predicts anything? From what I read in a Slate.com article, it sounds as if Gottman studied a small sample of people, coded their relationship attributes, then checked back with them years later to find out which of the couples ended up divorcing. From that information, he had a computer build a model that would have predicted which of the couples divorced. However, there have been no published studies on actually applying this formula to new sets of couples. http://www.slate.com/id/2246732/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.66.106 (talk) 01:27, 25 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would wonder too, if predicting a couples relationship will end in divorce can impact the results. For example, if a researcher like Gottman predicted my husband and I would get divorced, it would almost feel like our fate was sealed and I'm sure we would have a harder time working on our communication. Does Gottman tell the couples his prediction? And does he continue to follow up with the couples? I wonder what the accuracy of his studies are with these factors in mind. Evacobb (talk) 14:41, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can find an answer to your question here on the Research FAQ section of on our website at www.gottman.com.

Etana Kunovsky, Executive Director, The Gottman Relationship Institute —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.121.7.37 (talk) 22:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]


On the above link there is no online viewable source. No mentioning of the size of the study and the used statistics. I would not regard that a source. I stumbled upon this reading a German Interiew in "Die Zeit" (https://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/leben/2014-06/sexkolumne-kuessen-beziehungen-ulrich-clement?utm_term=facebook_zonaudev_int&utm_medium=sm&wt_zmc=sm.int.zonaudev.facebook.ref.zeitde.redpost_zon.link.sf&utm_source=facebook_zonaudev_int&utm_content=zeitde_redpost_zon_link_sf&utm_campaign=ref). And wanted just couriously look up the studies John Gottman made and expected publishings on the website of his university. I just mention that there are usually follow-up studies. The refered study is from 1992! No study after that to confirm the findings to my notice yet. Please contribute links if I may ask for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.70.231 (talk) 13:54, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I reviewed the literature a few years ago. There were no follow up studies, and it seems that Gottman stopped engaging with academic criticism for quite a long time. It is his prerogative. But the skeptic should take this lack of responses into account, I think Jazi Zilber (talk) 15:15, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The entire underpinning for Gottman's renown is his self-proclaimed predictive ability. But that has been debunked many times. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1622921/ "The Hazards of Predicting Divorce Without Crossvalidation" by Richard E. Heyman and Amy M. Smith Slep. The authors explain that Gottman's work fails the validity test and they create a post-hoc analysis of their own on similarly flimsy grounds to prove the point. The Wikipedia page should have a "Criticism" or "Controversy" section that includes valid scientific and professional criticisms. There are many. I also find it rather disturbing and transparently self-serving that a paid member of Gottman's institute is editing this page. Isn't Wikipedia meant to be as neutral a platform as possible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 06:40, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Information on John Gottman's research[edit]

Full disclosure: I work for The Gottman Relationship Institute, which was co-founded by John Gottman, and we would like a change made to the Wikipedia entry on him.

The 3rd paragraph is made up largely of Laurie Abraham's claims about Dr. Gottman's research. Ms. Abraham's claims are inaccurate, and thorough citations can be found here: http://www.gottman.com/49853/Research-FAQs.html. We would like the paragraph removed, or at least moved to a section where the details of Dr. Gottman's research can be expanded upon.

I know that it would be a violation of the Conflict of Interest policy for me to just go in and make the changes, so I would like other editors' input. We're not trying to bury anything "bad" about Dr. Gottman, we just want the information that is out there to be accurate! Please advise...

(Also, this is my first discussion here, so I hope I'm doing this right!)

Annsy5 (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Annsy5[reply]

Hi, Annsy5. Asking here is doing it exactly right. Editing the article to remove sourced information that conflicts with your point of view, however, was wrong. Please don't do that again, and please ask the other folks at the institute to stop that as well. It violates our policies on conflict of interest and point-of-view editing. I've added a sentence with the link suggested by Etana that I hope properly represents your views. Hopefully that suits; if not, just mention your concerns here again. Thanks, William Pietri (talk) 15:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the article again, I agree that the claims and counterclaims on prediction didn't belong above the fold, so I have created a new section. Since the predictions are what have frequently caught the popular interest, I put it first. 69.17.34.114 (talk) 15:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the edit under discussion is addressed here. Rvcx (talk) 15:40, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

He is an apriori measures that correlated strongly with follow up marital satisfaction [1]Jazi Zilber (talk) 06:36, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To the director of the Gottman Institute: You're right, it is a conflict of interest for you to be editing these pages and even to be influencing this conversation here. It is not appropriate to redirect the conversation toward your institute, which has a vested institute. Wikipedia is not meant to be a bullhorn for financial interests. We can find the information, or not, without undue influence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 17:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

External links[edit]

Standard Scientific/Mathematical Treatment Please?[edit]

I know your average person just wants results explained "in plain English", but it's easier for someone with a background in statistical pattern recognition/classification to see results analyzed in terms of ROC curves, misclassification rates, false positive vs. missed detection, expected loss, and all the other industry standards that have been a pervasive part of classification since the 1960's, if not earlier. I think all of those questions about "what does he mean when he says 94% accurate?" and whether the cross-validation criticism really still applies, would be well understood with no confusion (at least to those with the requisite background) if the results of the studies could be concisely presented in terms of these types of descriptive mathematical/scientific tools. 99.109.21.254 (talk) 06:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disassemble[edit]

The article is titled John Gottman but the bulk of it seems to detail his theories and work. In my opinion this article should concentrate on the person and another article be constructed to contain the bulk of what is currently here rgerading his theories etc. His work should be referred to here and summarised rather than detailed. LookingGlass (talk) 09:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

seems right at first thought, but not sure at all.
will we have an article Gottman marriage research?
its common to summarise a person work in his entry.
maybe you are right.
the onerousness of details here stem from the pro con confusion here. As every edit added more details for and against the validity of his research, Jazi Zilber (talk) 17:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was feeling a little bit confused about the intent of this article. It makes sense to me to have his research and theories stated on this page because I would assume that those who are searching this page are looking for his contributions to society, rather than to learn more about his personal life. Regardless, maybe it could be useful to merge the two together and create a more cohesive article surrounding both the personal and professional life of John Gottman. Paigewrigley (talk) 23:35, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I feel like having information on his professional life is completely appropriate. However, in a few sections I felt like it was a little heavy on the research information. I wonder if rather than expanding largely on some topics, it would be better to explain it more concisely and tag another article with more specific information. Also, I know he has done work with children and the transition into parenthood but this was barely mentioned. If there's going to be a bunch of information about his research on marriages, I would also like to see information about this research as well. Alli47 (talk) 04:09, 30 September 2021 (UTC)Alli47[reply]

Personal Life[edit]

I have updated the section regarding Dr. Gottman's religious observance. It said that he 'currently' identifies with conservative Judaism. The referenced article was from 20 years ago; that is no longer current, and the inaccuracy is compounded by the fact that the conservative Judaism of today is a much different religion than it was 20 years ago. His observance of kosher and the Sabbath, on the other hand, can be assumed to be consistent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.2.180.222 (talk) 22:41, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The article states "Two decades ago, he married Julie Gottman, a psychotherapist. The couple currently lives in Washington state. They have a biological child together, Moriah Gottman."

This means that he waited until he was about fifty years old to get married, and also hints that his wife is likely to be around twenty years younger than he is.

If this is the case, it means his own marriage is substantially different from the modal marriage (at least the modal first marriage - without additional information to the contrary, it is to be assumed that his marriage to Julie is his first).

Since his area of expertise, and claim to sufficient notoriety to warrant a Wikipedia article, is marriage and marriage quality, his own situation in this regard should be elaborated on, I think.

120.18.153.102 (talk) 09:15, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

according to himself he was "not good at relationships, and used to joke that you either study relationships or have them" (not word to word qoute)
but when he dated his wife he used insights from his research to advance the relationship and to make it work.
his wife btw, is a therapist by profession Jazi Zilber (talk) 16:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! 120.18.190.58 (talk) 01:55, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Critique and replication sections need to be summarized. Way too long.[edit]

The entry is ultimately about Gottman. Failed replications are crucial, but should not be sooo long Jazi Zilber (talk) 14:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Done mostly Jazi Zilber (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Other critiques[edit]

Gottman inst is pretty aggressive about critiques. This is brand-driven research with training, videos, lectures etc behind it. I had a critique about the lack of "bid frequency" data, and made some requests to get this data and correlate it as well. I suspected that it would be equally as predictive - and of course this changes the whole model and premise of his many-layered conclusions. Still waiting for a response. I sent another contact today. We'll see. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.194.114.178 (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There was no academic publications on this, nor public data. The findings are summarized in Gottman's book "The Relationship Cure" ([3]. The book is full with numbers etc. Jazi Zilber (talk) 05:26, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Income[edit]

How much income does John Gottman earn from his books, workshops, etc.? Yev Yev (talk) 18:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think it is known. But I do not think it matters as much. You can however go and do the math. The costs of seminars is public, and the number of participants can also be glimpsed at.
Note also, that his style of studies are very expensive. They are probably funded by grants, but it gives a perspective Jazi Zilber (talk) 13:59, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Principia Amoris

Should Gottman's latest book Principia Amoris (Nov 2014) be added to the list of noted books? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stewartglass (talk • contribs) 07:13, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, within this new book he intoduces his "Love Equations" which could also be explained within the article Joeacker95 (talk) 22:39, 3 May 2021 (UTC)Joeacker95[reply]

Issue in this article.[edit]

NPOV This article reads like a magazine puff piece. The point of view is not neutral. Template: This article also does not seem to follow the typical template of a living person.2607:FEA8:D55F:F62E:45C5:5859:F817:EA5F (talk) 08:24, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Originally, the article was like an ad. But it now has varying critics and devotes quite some length to contradictory evidence etc. A lot of fluff was already removed actually. But you can edit if you wish Jazi Zilber (talk) 09:53, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposed merge of The Man's Guide to Women into John Gottman[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was consensus in support of the merge. Stonkaments (talk) 02:12, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

sparse reviews, not separately notable DGG ( talk ) 01:18, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - less notable than other Gottman books. Stonkaments (talk) 15:25, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - not enough in-depth coverage for a separate article. Onel5969 TT me 03:05, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Possible Edits[edit]

Being new to the Wikipedia editing process, I’d like to present some possible edits I may make. Feedback would be appreciated. These potential edits are: fixing broken links/nonexistent pages, adding parenthesis around (“emotional withdrawal from interaction, usually due to feeling overwhelmed by criticism) to separate “emotional withdrawal” from sounding like an additional item on the list, and adding a reference from Iranian Journal of Psychiatry as an independent study. I also agree that it makes sense to merge “The Man’s Guide to Women” into the Gottman article. Thank you for your patience as I learn the ropes of this system. ABeautifulDayToday (talk) 05:37, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Gottman Method of Relationship Therapy I noticed that contributions are needed in this section. I indeed to study this topic and add contributions to this area. Feedback and advice are appreciated. AmandaBYUI (talk) 21:09, 30 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Cascade Model of Relational Dissolution[edit]

If we have a separate article for this, we only need a brief one-paragraph description here. We should either merge back the material, or remove the duplicative content here. DGG ( talk ) 21:09, 3 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Adult Development Spring 2022[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 April 2022 and 18 July 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AriannaLarson (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by AriannaLarson (talk) 00:57, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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