Predicting divorce among newlyweds from the first three minutes of a marital conflict discussion.
This study tested the hypothesis that how a discussion of a marital conflict begins--in its first few minutes--is a predictor of divorce. The marital conflict discussion of 124 newlywed couples was coded using the Specific Affect Coding System, and the data were divided into positive, negative, and positive-minus-negative affect totals for five 3-minute intervals. It was possible to predict marital outcome over a 6-year period using just the first 3 minutes of data for both husbands and wives. For husbands this prediction improved as the groups diverged in the remaining 12 minutes; for wives the prediction remained equally powerful for the remaining 12 minutes as it had been in the first 3 minutes.
Carrère
S
S
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle 98195-1525, USA. carrere@u.washington.edu
Gottman
J M
JM
D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D004243:Divorce / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000523:psychology*; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D015588:Observer Variation; D012737:Sex Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000145:classification