Princess Margaret: Experts discuss 'heartbreaking' divorce
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Psychological researcher John Gottman and mathematics professor James Murray filmed couples in long term relationships for 15 minutes having a row. From the footage they worked out a way to score everything that was happening during the argument, including heart rate, blood pressure, facial expressions and skin conductance.
They also factored in whether certain couples used humour, whether they were being open, or if they were being pretentious and aggressive.
Using their data, Gottman and Murray have outlined an equation to work out whether a couple will get divorced. The equation is said to be 90 percent accurate.
So, get your pen and paper out, because here’s the equation:
Wt+1= w + RwWt+ IHM (Ht)
This may just look like a bunch of random numbers and letters, but we will break it down for you, because it’s actually pretty clever.
· The Wt+1 stands for the positivity or negativity of the wife’s next comment in the argument
· The w after the = stands for the wife’s general mood
· You then add that to the ‘RwWt’ which basically stands for the wife’s mood with the husband
· Next, you add IHM, which stands for the husband’s influence
· (Ht) at the end of the equation means you need to include the husband’s most recent action too
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BkOIw7vAZCQ
Gottman and Murray came up with a coding system which is oddly named “SPAFF” – it stands for SPecific AFFect Coding System. Using this system will put everything you’ve said in your argument, categorised into codes. So ‘defensiveness’ will be a negative code, but ‘affection’ or ‘humour’ will be a positive code – it’s as simple as that.
Each reaction in the argument is worth a number of points. So, for joy it’s +4, humour it’s +4 and interest it’s +2. Negative reactions will lose points with -4 for contempt and -3 for disgust.
You’re probably thinking, ‘but how does this work out if I’m going to get a divorce or not?’ Well, the coding system and the equation generally tie in together.
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According to mathematician Hannah Fry this all depends on the last part of the equation, which is the husband’s influence and the husband’s reaction.
It’s all about positive and negative reactions that are put into a fancy graph, and if it reaches a certain threshold, it could be the end.
Surprisingly, the graph found that couples with a very low negativity threshold were actually the least successful, which suggests that a squabble now and then is needed. The couples that were more successful, were the ones that spoke up immediately about any issues.
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