John Gottman

In 2021, Gottman received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Gottman was recognized in 2007 as one of the 10 most influential therapists of the past twenty-five years.

In a 2002 paper, Gottman and Robert W. Levenson perform a regression analysis of a two-factor model where skin conductance levels and oral history narratives encodings are the only two statistically significant variables. Facial expressions using Ekman's encoding scheme were not statistically significant.

Gottman's follow-up study with newlywed couples, published in 2000, used the Oral History Interview to predict marital stability and divorce. Gottman's model fit with 87.4% accuracy for classifying couples who divorce (or not) within the couples' first five years of marriage. He used couples' perceptions about their marriages and each other to model marital stability or divorce.

In 1998, Gottman developed a model to predict which newlywed couples would remain married and which would divorce four to six years later. The model fits the data with 90% accuracy. Another model from Gottman can determine with 81% accuracy which marriages survived after seven to nine years.

John Gottman conducted a study based on oral interviews with 95 newlywed couples. His predictions are based on perceived marital bonds. Couples were asked about their relationship, mutual history, and philosophy toward marriage. The interview measured the couple's perceptions of shared history and marriage by focusing on the positive or negative qualities of the relationship expressed in the telling of the story. To measure each spouse’s perception of the marriage and each other, the interviewer listened to the couple’s negative or positive experiences. Rather than scoring the content of their answers, interviewers used the Oral History Interview coding system, developed by Buehlman and Gottman in 1996, to measure spouses' perceptions about the marriage and each other. Therefore, the couples' perception was used to predict whether they would gain marital stability or end up divorced. The more positive their perceptions and attitudes were about their marriage and each other, the more stable the marriage.

A study published by Matthews, Wickrama and Conger, based on couples' perceptions, was done in 1996. The study showed that spousal hostility and net of warmth predicted, with 80% accuracy, which couples would divorce or not divorce within a year.

Gottman has been the recipient of four National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Awards; the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Distinguished Research Scientist Award, the American Family Therapy Academy Award for Most Distinguished Contributor to Family Systems Research, the American Psychological Association Division of Family Psychology, Presidential Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Research Contribution and the National Council of Family Relations, 1994 Burgess Award for Outstanding Career in Theory and Research. In addition, Gottman takes a spot in the Psychotherapy Networker's Top 10 Most Influential Therapists of the past quarter-century.

The original study was published by Gottman and Christopher Buehlman in 1992, in which they interviewed couples with children. A posteriori modeling yielded a discriminant function that could discern those who had divorced with 94% accuracy. Since Gottman believed that early married life is a period of adjustment, and perceptions are being formed, he sought to predict marital stability and divorce through couples' perceptions during the first year of marriage.

At Fairleigh Dickinson University, Gottman worked as an instructor for the mathematics department, a research assistant for the department of physics, and a researcher for the school of engineering. At the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, he worked as a computer programmer and mathematician. He was a program evaluator and research designer for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. 1981, Gottman became a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. Additionally, he was professor of psychology at the University of Washington, Seattle for 16 years. From 2002 until today, Gottman works as the Emeritus Professor of Psychology for the University of Washington and as the Executive Director for the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle. Alongside his wife, he is also the co-founder of The Gottman Institute.

John Gottman received his bachelor's degree in Mathematics-Physics from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1962. In 1964, Gottman earned his master's in Mathematics-Psychology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received an M.A. in Clinical Psychology-Mathematics in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin.

John Mordechai Gottman (born April 26, 1942) is an American psychologist, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. His work focuses on divorce prediction and marital stability through relationship analyses. The lessons derived from this work represent a partial basis for the relationship counseling movement that aims to improve relationship functioning and the avoidance of those behaviors shown by Gottman and other researchers to harm human relationships. His work has also had a major impact on the development of important concepts on social sequence analysis. He and his wife, psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman, co-founded and lead a relationship company and therapist training entity called The Gottman Institute. They have also co-founded Affective Software Inc, a program designed to make marriage and relationship counseling methods and resources available to a larger audience.

John Gottman was born on April 26, 1942 in the Dominican Republic to Orthodox Jewish parents. His father was a rabbi in pre-World War II Vienna. Gottman was educated in a Lubavitch yeshiva elementary school in Brooklyn. He keeps kosher (the following of Jewish dietary laws) and observes Shabbat, a day dedicated to religious worship and rest.