Remember _Blink_? Remember Gladwell's enthusiasm for "thin-slicing" behaviour? Remember his endorsement of Gottman's claim that he could predict which marriages would succeed years later based on a mere 15 minutes of videotaped interaction (later reduced to 5 minutes)?
Well, it seems that things were not quite as they were described. In an article in _Slate_ Laurie Abraham tells how she checked into Gottman's published work on the topic. It turns out that Gottman never actually checked his vaunted predictive powers by doing a prospective study. Instead, he worked backward from his prior knowledge of the marriage outcomes, together with the variables he had measured from the videotapes. The result was a formula which he claimed predicted marriage success 83% of the time. But he never showed that it did. In addition it seems there was a problem with not taking into account the baseline rate of divorce which made his predictions less than overwhelming. All of this is rather disturbing stuff from a methodological point of view. You can read the article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2246732/pagenum/all/ And I thank the reticent TIPSter who pointed me to it. Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1167 or send a blank email to leave-1167-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
