Researchers say they can predict divorces

That creepy feeling you sometimes get while attending a wedding -- "this one ain't gonna last" -- is now being expressed in numbers.

In an unusual bit of numerical reasoning, a psychologist and two mathematicians at the University of Washington state that they now can predict the fate of a marriage with high accuracy, identifying shortly after nuptials up to 94 percent of the couples who are destined to split.

Here's how: By recording what happens while husband and wife engage in a brief conversation, and counting the number of positive and negative interactions, the researchers calculate a compatibility ratio that warns when a marriage is heading for trouble. If negative interactions outweigh good ones by five to one, expect divorce.

Psychology professor John Gottman and applied mathematicians Kristin Rae Swanson and James D. Murray released their findings last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle.

Murray explained that "what we did is extract key elements into a model so it is interpretive and predictive. The mathematics we came up with is trivial, but the model is astonishingly accurate."

The researchers based their findings on video-taped conversations between husband and wife in 700 couples tested in Gottman's laboratory at the University of Washington. The newlyweds' conversations dealt with areas of contention within the marriage, stirring up feelings and emotions that surround issues such as money or where to live. It only took a few minutes of such talk to discern who would probably divorce, the team said.

The study, which involved couples who volunteered just after getting marriage licenses, began in 1992, and 35 percent have since divorced. Every year or so they get followup questionnaires asking how their relationships are doing.

"The surprise," Murray said, "was that based on our mathematics, we predicted the outcome of these marriages from an initial 15-minute conversation."

What's now clear, Gottman said in a prepared statement, is that "when the `masters' of marriage are talking about something important, they may be arguing, but they are also laughing and teasing, and there are signs of affection. They have made emotional connections."

And the bottom line? Maybe, the researchers said, counselors will learn how to intervene, teaching couples how to increase the ratio of positive-to-negative interactions, and have longer, better marriages.

ROBERT COOKE