why relationships end / role of communication

Question 1

gottman and carrie aim

Answer 1

to see of they can predict if a marridge would end through minimal observation

Question 2

carrie and gottman participants

Answer 2

Prospective study
124 newly wed couples
Stratified with a range of types of participants

Question 3

carrie and gottman procedure

Answer 3

• did a qurstionairre and spoke to an interviewer about martial problems
• indetified 2 probelms
• used this as topic for 15 min conversation
• used spaff

Positive affect: interest, validation, affection, humor, joy
Negative affect: disgust, contempt, belligerence, domineering, anger, fear, defensiveness, whining, sadness, stonewalling
Neutral affect

Question 4

carrie and gottman results

Answer 4

married had negative traits of around -30 and divorced has around -60. both men and women

married had pos traits around 80 and divoced had around 40

This study was the basis for the 4 horsemen, and also belligerance was added wich is the act of questioning a spouses power and authority

Question 5

gottman alone aim

Answer 5

they had identified negative traits tigether, gottman wanted to determine positive traits on relationship satisfaction. he examined the active listening model

Question 6

gottman alone participant

Answer 6

Couplegott s recruit from newspaper
Married for the 1 time within 6 months of participation and no kids
124 couples

Question 7

gottman aim

Answer 7

• participants took marital satisfaction test
  Every year for 6 years they were tested with the MAT

At the end there were 17 divorces

agreed on a source of ongoing disagreement through their marriage to discuss in an interactive session

Topic was discussed for 15 mins and the following physiological predictors

Heart rate
Pulse transmission
Skin conductivity

They were asked to sit questly for 2 mins to get a baseline for these

Both spouses were recorded and the specific affect coding system was used to measure expressions tone speech content and then each video was interpreted by different observers

Active listening was measures when one partner expressed negative effect and the other validated this affect

After the session they had to review their video and a ‘continuous rating effect was used’ by asking the spouse to say how they felt on a scale of 1-9 during the interaction

Question 8

results gottman

Answer 8

After 6 years, they found that the husband and wife high-intensity negative affect (bewilderment, defensiveness and contempt) predicts divorce, a wife low intensity negative affect (wining sadness disgust) predicted divorce, but not the case for the man

Evidence supported that contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness were the destructive patterns during a conflict.

What surprised Gottman was that the active listening model did not predict positive outcomes.

Although the Active Listening Model is often used in marriage therapy to develop strategies to support a relationship, there was not enough evidence in either the successful or failed marriages in this study to support that claim.

Question 9

strentghs gottman

Answer 9

• Using data triangulation as both physical aspects plus observations were used
• Inter coder reliability established increasing internal validity (more than one coder used)
• SPAFF is standardized

Question 10

gottman weaknesses

Answer 10

• Self selected samples - sampling bias
• Reductionist as it could be a number of factors, not just one
  -internal validity of such longitudinal studies is problematic

Question 11

bradbury and fincham aim

Answer 11

To see whether attribution factors are related to marital satisfaction

• Relationship enhancing patterns; whereby relationships don’t place blame or assume things were done ‘on purpose’
• Distress-maintaining pattern - blaming their partners, and not giving them credit for positive events

Question 12

bradbury and fincham participants

Answer 12

7 married couples through local media
Had not been in counseling
Average length of 8.5 years

observational study, looking at the why is there a probelm and whos fault is it

Question 13

bradbury and fincham procedure

Answer 13

All participants were asked to complete a survey on marital satisfaction

They were initially asked to fill in a questionnaire to determine the greatest problems in their marriage

They chose a similarity issue for both parties and asked them who was responsible

They then questioned them on one issue that wasn’t apparent by both people

After they were brought together to discuss a solution

Was in a lab
15 minutes
Recorded

Question 14

results bradbury and fincham

Answer 14

• Three researchers independently coded the tape for Relationship enhancing patterns and Distress-maintaining pattern
• Couples that reported lower marital satisfaction had more harmful patterns, and more likely to blame marital problems on their partner and tend to see their partner behave intentionally with selfishness
• The lower marital satisfaction couples seemed more hostile and rejective of their partners approaches

Question 15

strengths bradbury and fincham

Answer 15

• Research triangulation, strengthening the data