When it comes to selecting the most scientifically grounded approach to marital therapy, the Gottman Method stands out as a top contender. Developed by Dr. John Gottman, a highly respected researcher in the field of relationships, this method is rooted in decades of rigorous research and a commitment to evidence-based practice. Unlike many other therapy models, which may rely heavily on theoretical frameworks or anecdotal evidence, the Gottman Method offers a structured, research-driven approach that has been shown to improve marital satisfaction and intimacy. This blog post delves into the scientific underpinnings of the Gottman Method and explores the evidence supporting its effectiveness as one of the leading marital therapy models available today.
What Is the Gottman Method?
The Gottman Method is an evidence-based marital therapy model that was developed by renowned researcher-therapist, Dr. John Gottman, Ph.D. It is an operationalized model, which means that the interventions that make the Gottman Method distinct have been clearly defined, described, and used in research to determine their degree of efficacy.
Gottman Method marital therapy is not a “fly by the seat of your pants” type of therapy. Therapists who use this model have a clear treatment roadmap including well-defined milestones. This is helpful because it gives therapists the ability to inform couples how a course of marital therapy is going at any given moment. This kind of feedback can also be reassuring to the couple who will naturally want to know if their financial investment in their treatment is likely leading toward success.
How Was the Gottman Method Created?
Dr. Gottman and his research partner Bob Levenson began by acknowledging to one another that they did not have a clue as to how to make a marriage work. It was from this place of not knowing, that they decided to study marriages to try to find out what makes one couple happy and another miserable (Gottman, 2011).
Dr. Gottman attended the University of Wisconsin, which was famous at the time for their observational studies of primates in their natural environment and in the lab (ibid., p. 10). This became the inspiration for his use of a “research first, theory second” approach, an approach which offers a much higher degree of credibility to claims that a product or service is effective than when employing a “theory first, research second” method. He provides part of his rationale for using this approach in his book, The Science of Trust, as follows:
…one cannot know how to design intervention programs for target populations in trouble by imagining what they need, or even by imagining it according to some abstract theoretical position. The early, descriptive, observational phase of science is crucial if one is to find out how people who are doing well with the same problems manage to do these tasks competently. It’s not a very hard concept, but it’s not how social scientists think, because we are typically trained to go from theory to experiment. (p. 10)
Dr. Gottman’s commitment to the “research first, theory second” approach is obvious in that he spent 24 years conducting marital research before he ever tried to design a single intervention to help couples!
What Theoretical Position Underlies Gottman Method Marital Therapy?
At the start of his research, Dr. Gottman clearly recognized the theoretical position which motivated his research, this theory was essentially that positive marital relationship change might be possible when interventions are used that take into account generalizations inferred from observational studies of married couples. Regarding this position, Dr. Gottman writes:
Of course, there is a hidden assumption in this […] empirical approach. That is that if we learn how couples normally go about the business of being in a lasting and satisfying relationship, we will discover a set of principles that can be used to help relationships that are ailing. The assumption is that these will be the same. In other words, the principles at work in good relationships can be applied to ones that are unhappy to fix them. But this could be wrong. There might be a different set of principles for fixing ailing relationships. Just like orthopedics requires knowledge not only of how healthy bones work but also of how to set bones that are broken, couple therapy may require some new principles for healing broken relationships. Even if this hypothesis is wrong, it’s not a bad place to start. So far it’s worked as an approach. (ibid., pp. 10-11)
Evidence is accruing in support of Gottman’s claim that “so far it’s worked as an approach.” A review of the research between 2010 and 2019 on evidence-based treatments for couple relationship distress concluded that Gottman Method marital therapy belongs in the category of “approaches to couple therapy [that] have seen promising, but more limited, empirical support for their approach” (Doss, et al., 2021, p. 296). Although it is outside the scope of this article to review all the scholarly articles reporting on individual Gottman Method intervention outcome studies, I will review a couple here.
Gottman Method Marital Therapy Outcome Study Results
Results from a 2018 study on the effectiveness of Gottman Method marital therapy revealed that “Gottman’s couple therapy approach had positive effects on improving marital adjustment […] and couples’ intimacy” and that “Gottman’s couple therapy had enduring effects on marital adjustment and couples’ intimacy” (Davoodvandi, et al., p. 135). The authors concluded the following:
According to the results of the present study, Gottman method can be used as an effective treatment in improving marital relationships, compatibility, and intimacy, which will result in increasing family strength. Therefore, researchers, therapists, and other authorities should attend to this theory. (p. 140)
Additionally, a 2015 article by Shapiro, et al., reports on the results of a randomized clinical trial comparing a waiting list control group with an experimental group which received a combination of lectures, exercises, videos, and role-play exercises designed by Dr. Gottman to help couples better handle the inherently challenging transition to parenthood. The study discovered that when the babies of the couples in the treatment group reached three-month’s old, the husbands experienced significant “decreased contempt and increased positive affect during conflict” (p. 247). While the same change was not seen in the wives of the treatment group at this point in the marriage, the authors speculate that the decreased reactivity of the husband at this crucial time for the new mother may be a catapult for improved handling of marital conflict by the wives later in the marriage, given that a former study on the same interventions showed decreased hostility in conflict for both husbands and wives at one-year post-birth (Shapiro & Gottman, 2005).
That the individual or non-comprehensive studies mentioned here (Davoodvandi, et al., 2018; Shapiro & Gottman, 2005; Shapiro, et al., 2015) used a waiting list for their control group instead of a placebo group may not be an ideal study design, but it is understandable given the inherent difficulties when trying to design a therapy outcome study well as I have written about in a previous article.
A Model That Constantly Improves
One thing that I find particularly impressive about Dr. Gottman is that when a study reveals that a particular intervention does not work for as many couples as he had expected beforehand, he will sometimes assign one or more of his students to conduct research to discover why, and then will modify the Gottman Method based on the results of the students’ research (Gottman Institute, n.d.). This means that over time Gottman Method marital therapy should trend towards helping a bigger percentage of couples undergoing treatment, which is something that excites me as a marital therapist.
A Rare and Unique Trait of Dr. John Gottman
Therapists often understandably view therapy as more of an art than a science. They tend to cringe at the thought of working through mathematical problems or doing statistical compilation and analysis, leaving the study of these subjects up to the likes of engineers, chemists, and other scientists. In contrast, Dr. Gottman is a consummate scientist and self-proclaimed math geek. In his book, The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples (2011), Dr. Gottman makes a convincing case using mathematical game theory that when husbands help their wives with household cleaning, this increases the probability that there will be an increase in the overall happiness of both husband and wife. He also dedicates an entire chapter (Cf. Chapter 11) of the same book to an explanation of how he spent over fifteen years working with a team of mathematicians at the University of Washington on building a mathematical model of relationships. It was in reading this chapter that I was struck with amazement at how extremely unique Dr. Gottman is. No other therapist has ever even tried to do what this brilliant man has already accomplished by creating the first ever complex mathematical model of marital relating using mathematical biology. I also doubt that any other therapist has ever even conceived that such a thing is possible. With his model, Dr. Gottman is not only able to study and quantify couple interactions in real time, but he can also simulate couple interactions, that is, he can change the parameters of his model in various ways to simulate what is likely to happen in an interaction if intervention “x” or behavior “y” is employed. In his words:
Imagine if you could take a client couple and get the equations and simulate what the couple might be like if you changed certain key parameters of their interaction. We have learned that without actually changing the system’s basic operating principles of influencing each other, we can have a dramatic effect on the couple. (ibid., p. 422)
One thing that fascinates me about Dr. Gottman is that he has put in so much time laying the groundwork that now allows him to systematically and continually improve his marital therapy theory. The hardest work is now perhaps behind him; thus, I wait with great anticipation for him to use his mathematical model as he has been to continue to discover which therapeutic interventions work best to improve certain especially difficult marital situations and then to teach us what those interventions are and when to use them. Given where Dr. Gottman is currently headed in his research and treatment of married couples, what Davoodvandi, et al., advised in 2018 now seems an understatement: “Researchers, therapists, and other authorities should attend to [Gottman’s] theory” (p. 140). My profession should do more than just attend to this theory; we should learn and use it!
Summary
The Gottman Method is not only a leading marital therapy model but also one of the most scientifically validated. Dr. Gottman’s dedication to a “research first, theory second” approach has resulted in a therapy model that is both highly effective and continually evolving. The evidence presented here underscores the Gottman Method’s effectiveness in improving marital relationships, and its strong scientific foundation suggests that it will only become more refined and impactful over time. As marital therapists and couples seek out the best methods for strengthening relationships, the Gottman Method stands out as a trustworthy and valuable approach.
References
Davoodvandi, M., Navabi Nejad, S., & Farzad, V. (2018). Examining the Effectiveness of Gottman Couple Therapy on Improving Marital Adjustment and Couples’ Intimacy. Iranian journal of psychiatry, 13(2), 135–141. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6037577/
Doss, B. D., Roddy, M. K., Wiebe, S. A., & Johnson, S. M. (2021). A review of the research during 2010–2019 on evidence-based treatments for couple relationship distress. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 48, 283–306. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12552
Gottman, J.M. (2011). The science of trust: Emotional attunement for couples. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Gottman Institute. (n.d.). The Art and Science of Love workshop [DVD]. Gottman Institute.
Shapiro, A. F., & Gottman, J. M. (2005). Effects on marriage of a psycho-communicative-educational intervention with couples undergoing the transition to parenthood, evaluation at 1-year post intervention. Journal of Family Communication, 5, 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327698jfc0501_1
Shapiro, A. F., Gottman, J. M., & Fink, B. C. (2015). Short-term change in couples’ conflict following a transition to parenthood intervention. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 4(4), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000051
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