The Roles of Conflict Engagement, Escalation, and Avoidance in Marital Interaction A Longitudinal View of Five Types of Couples John M. Gottman Department of Psychology University of Washington ABSTRACT Seventy-three couples were studied at 2 time points 4 years apart. A typology of 5 groups of couples is proposed on the basis of observational data of Time 1 resolution of conflict, specific affects, and affect sequences. Over the 4 years, the groups of couples differed significantly in serious considerations of divorce and in the frequency of divorce. There were 3 groups of stable couples: validators, volatiles, and avoiders, who could be distinguished from each other on problem-solving behavior, specific affects, and persuasion attempts. There were 2 groups of unstable couples: hostile and hostile/detached, who could be distinguished from each other on problem-solving behavior and on specific negative and positive affects. A balance theory of marriage is proposed, which explores the idea that 3 distinct adaptations exist for having a stable marriage. This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grant MH42722 and NIMH Research Scientist Developmental Award MH00257. Correspondence may be addressed to John M. Gottman, Department of Psychology, NI-25, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195. Received: January 7, 1992 Revised: June 17, 1992 Accepted: July 28, 1992 There have been many previous attempts at marital typologies (e.g., Bell, 1975 ; Cuber & Harroff, 1965 ; Fitzpatrick, 1988 ; Margolin, 1988 ; Olson, 1981 ). Most of these classifications of marriages were not based on direct observation of how couples behaved, but rather they were based on self-report data concerning beliefs, life styles, or interaction patterns ( Gottman, 1979 ). It would also be useful to have an external criterion validity test of a proposed classification system. This article proposes longitudinal stability of the marriage or divorce as the external validity criterion. To date, there have been only four prospective studies of divorce ( Bentler & Newcomb, 1978 ; Block, Block, & Morrison, 1981 ; Constantine & Bahr, 1980 ; Kelly & Conley, 1987 ); these studies have produced weak and inconsistent results, and none have used interview or observational data. In a previous report, Gottman and Levenson (1992) proposed a preliminary typology that divided married couples into two groups: a "regulated" group, whose interactive speaker behaviors during a 15-min conflict discussion were generally more positive than negative, and a "nonregulated" group, whose interactions were more positive than negative. The goal of this article is to extend this typology by considering additional behavioral data that have recently become available for the same sample. The behavior of the listener as well as the behavior of the speaker will be considered, as will the coding of affect. This article also attempts to combine quantitative methods of data analysis with admittedly more Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology © 1993 by the American Psychological Association February 1993 Vol. 61, No. 1, 6-15 For personal use only--not for distribution. Page 1 of 1511/27/2000http://spider.apa.org/ftdocs/ccp/1993/february/ccp6116.htmlspeculative clinical observations to suggest a typology of five groups of couples that differ in marital interaction patterns, in marital satisfaction at two time points, and in marital stability. It would also be useful if a proposed typology were organized around theoretical questions. The typology proposed here is organized around a behavioral balance theory of marriage, in which it is assumed that marriages function with a kind of set point that balances positivity with negativity. Balance theories of marriage have been implicit in marital research from two traditions, the behavioral tradition ( Gottman, 1979 ; Wills, Weiss, & Patterson, 1974 ), and the behavior exchange tradition ( Gottman et al., 1976 ; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959 ). The assumption in the proposed balance theory is that the set point makes a difference in predicting the future course of the marriage. Method Subjects 1 Seventy-nine couples were originally recruited in Bloomington, Indiana, using newspaper advertisements. A demographic summary is provided in Gottman and Levenson (1992) . Procedure Interaction Session Couples had three 15-min conversations: (a) events of the day, (b) conflict resolution (discussion of a problem area of continuing disagreement), and (c) pleasant topic. Follow-Up Four years after the initial assessment, the original 79 couples were recontacted, and at least one spouse (70 husbands and 72 wives) from 73 of the couples (92.4%) agreed to participate in the follow-up. Spouses completed a set of questionnaires assessing marital satisfaction and items relevant to possible marital dissolution. The two dichotomous variables, serious considerations of divorce in the 4 years since Time 1 and Time 2 and actual divorce, will serve as the external criterion variables in this article. Coding and Analysis of the Data The videotapes of the problem area interaction were coded using three observational coding systems: the Marital Interaction Coding System (MICS), which in this study was used to focus on persuasion attempts; the Rapid Couples Interaction Scoring System (RCISS), which focused on problem solving (both speaker and listener behaviors); and the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF), which focused on specific emotions. The RCISS provided the means for classifying couples into the initial groups. Marital Interaction Coding System The MICS ( Weiss & Summers, 1983 ) was used in this study to obtain an estimate of attempts at persuasion used by the couples for each third of the 15-min conflict marital interaction; the sum of two MICS subcodes, disagreement plus criticism (labeled engagement by Gottman & Krokoff, 1989 ), was used to provide a crude index of persuasion attempts. 2 MICS codes were assigned continuously by coders for 30-s blocks. Double codes, which are used with more recent versions of the MICS, were treated as additional single codes for this research. Means reported for the MICS are the total number of persuasion attempts in each 5-min block. A sample of every videotape was independently coded by another observer, and a confusion matrix was computed. The average weighted Cohen's kappa for this coding (all subcodes of the MICS summed over all
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