They can make telephone calls, for instance, or work at home if that’s what they usually do.Īmong their activities, couples typically read the Sunday paper. The couples bring in whatever food they like and receive no instructions other than to make their interactions as natural as possible. The apartment, which has a beautiful view of pleasure-boat traffic on the Montlake Cut, is equipped with a stove, microwave, sink, dining table, home entertainment center (“nicer than mine at home,” Gattman says), two couches-one of which opens to become a double bed-and a bathroom. Sunday and stay overnight (No, they’re not monitored after 10 p.m.). The live-ins typically enter the apartment at 9 a.m. “We want to look at the pre-child marriage and see how it changes when a child comes,” he says. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the project is called “Becoming a Family.” Researchers will follow the progress of the couples, most of whom plan to have children, for the first five years after they give birth. His staff includes 20 researchers and 50 undergraduate helpers. Gattman plans to study 50 newlywed couples in his apartment setting, plus test 90 more in his office. You want to look at the bee in the hive.” “You don’t want to take the bee out of the hive and into the laboratory. He became interested in biological monitoring because of his 10-year collaboration with Robert Levenson, a Cal-Berkeley psychophysiologist.Īsked why he studies couples in an apartment instead of a lab, he compares his work to a scientist studying bees. Gottman’s use of gizmos and Peeping Tom cameras separates him from the norm in couples research. So prior research hasn’t even tried to specify which marital interaction processes lead to divorce.” “And none had observed the interaction of couples. Most were interested only in the effects of divorce or separation, not in predicting it. But, Gattman notes, “Past research has been quite unsuccessful at predicting who will separate or divorce.” Out of 1,200 published studies, Gattman found only four that were long-term surveys taken before and after divorce. marriages end in divorce, a rate that’s shown dramatic increases in this century. “Without the ability to predict divorce, we’ll never understand why marriages fail or work well,” says Gattman, a national expert on marriage and divorce who is frequently interviewed by the New York Times and other news organizations.Ĭurrently, about 50 percent of all U.S. Professor John Gattman sits in his apartment/laboratory as two assistants stand in the background. His previous physiological research on happy and unhappy marriages has enabled him to predict-with an astounding 95 percent accuracy rate-which marriages will improve and which will deteriorate over the next three years. The UW professor, culminating 20 years of research, has married high-tech equipment that measures stress to the latest theories of spousal relationships. In reality it is a psychology lab, and these newlyweds are subjects in a UW study that may help psychologists such as John Gattman predict a marriage’s chance of survival. This is much more than a pleasant waterside apartment. Tomorrow they’ll have to give blood samples for additional analysis. Like an Orwellian nightmare, their every movement, facial expression and conversation is being videotaped by three wall-mounted cameras and watched by observers hidden behind one-way glass. That Starbucks they’re sipping will later be collected in a special “potty” in the bathroom, to be analyzed for stress-related hormones. Beneath the couple’s casual clothes there are monitors taped to their skin, recording their heart rates.Ī different gadget measures their perspiration. But something’s not quite right in this idyllic scene.
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