John Gottman

John Mordechai Gottman (born April 26, 1942) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on divorce prediction and marital stability through relationship analyses. Gottman's work is centered on the field of relationship counseling: enhanced relationship functioning and mitigation of behaviors detrimental to human relationships. Gottman's work has also contributed to the development of important concepts on social sequence analysis.

In 1996, Gottman co-founded and led The Gottman Institute alongside his wife, psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman. Together, they are the co-founders of Affective Software Inc., a program seeking to make marriage and relationship counseling procedures more accessible to a broader audience.

Personal life 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. Gottman practices Conservative Judaism, keeps kosher (follows Jewish dietary laws) and observes Shabbat.

In 1987, he married Julie Schwartz, a psychotherapist. His two previous marriages had ended in divorce. He has a daughter named Moriah Gottman. John and Julie Gottman live in Washington state.

Education and work experience John Gottman received his bachelor's degree in Mathematics-Physics from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1962. In 1964, he earned his master's in Mathematics-Psychology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a second master's degree in Clinical Psychology-Mathematics in 1967, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin.

Awards and honors 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 was chosen as one of the Psychotherapy Networker's Top 10 Most Influential Therapists of the past quarter-century.

Works Gottman has published over 190 papers, and is the author or co-author of 40 books, notably: Heyman argued that a 90% prediction may actually mean much less when considering the possibility of false positives and the low base rates of divorce. He also argued that it is inappropriate to make claims of "predictive power" without validating the model on independent samples. The Gottman Relationship Institute claims that six out of the seven of Gottman's studies have been properly predictive, by a non-standard definition of prediction in which all that is required is that predictive variables, but not their specific relationship to the outcome, were selected in advance.