Contempt vs Kindness: What Gottman's Love Lab Says About Lasting Love

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If decades of relationship research can be boiled down to two traits, they are kindness and generosity, and the habit that most reliably destroys them is contempt. That is the core finding psychologist John Gottman drew from years of watching real couples talk, argue and share their day, and it was popularised in 2014 by writer Emily Esfahani Smith in her widely read Atlantic essay "Masters of Love".

Smith opened with a sobering estimate from psychologist Ty Tashiro, author of The Science of Happily Ever After: by his reckoning, only about three in ten married couples stay together in a marriage that is both healthy and happy. The good news in the research is that the couples who do thrive are not lucky. They behave in recognisable ways that anyone can learn.

How scientists began studying love

When divorce rates in the United States climbed sharply in the 1970s, psychologists started treating marriage as something that could be observed and measured rather than only discussed. Gottman, working with psychologist Robert Levenson, began a series of long-term studies in which couples talked in the lab about how they met, a current disagreement and a happy memory, while sensors tracked heart rate, sweating and blood flow. Researchers then checked back years later to see who was still together.

In 1986 Gottman opened what reporters nicknamed the "Love Lab" at the University of Washington in Seattle: a small apartment where newlyweds spent a day doing ordinary things while cameras rolled. From these studies he sorted couples into two broad groups he called the masters, who were still together and content years later, and the disasters, who had split up or stayed together unhappily.

What separated the masters from the disasters

The physical data told an early story. Disaster couples showed signs of a body on alert, with fast heart rates and sweating even during calm conversation, as if sitting beside their partner were a threat. In one account, Gottman reported that a heart rate above about 95 beats per minute during a disagreement was one warning sign. Masters stayed physiologically calmer and created a climate of trust.

The clearest behavioural difference involved what Gottman calls "bids": small attempts to get a partner's attention, such as pointing out a bird outside the window or mentioning something from the news. A partner can turn toward the bid with interest, ignore it, or turn against it with irritation. In the Love Lab study, couples who were divorced six years later had turned toward each other's bids only about a third of the time. Couples who stayed together did so roughly 86 percent of the time.

Gottman summed up the masters' mindset in an interview with Smith, saying they look around for "things they can appreciate and say thank you for," while disasters scan for a partner's mistakes.

Contempt: the trait that does the most damage

Gottman named four patterns that predict a breakup, which he calls the Four Horsemen: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt. Of these, he singles out contempt as the most corrosive. Contempt is more than anger. It is treating your partner as beneath you, through mockery, sarcasm, eye-rolling or name-calling.

Smith's essay described a related finding: people who are busy criticising their partner tend to miss a large share of the good things that partner does, and can even see negativity that is not there. Stonewalling, meaning shutting down or giving the silent treatment, does its own harm, because it tells the other person they do not matter.

Kindness, and why it matters most during a fight

On the positive side, research summarised in the essay points to kindness, along with emotional stability, as one of the strongest predictors of a satisfied and stable relationship. Kindness helps each partner feel understood and valued, which is close to what most of us mean by feeling loved.

The hardest moment to be kind is in the middle of a disagreement, and that is exactly when it counts. Gottman found that stable couples keep at least five positive interactions for every negative one even during conflict, and far more in calm times. They also make "repair attempts", such as a joke, an apology or a touch on the arm, that stop an argument from spiralling. Julie Schwartz Gottman, a psychologist and John's wife and co-founder of the Gottman Institute, has explained that kindness does not mean hiding anger; it shapes how you express it. Explaining why you are hurt is a very different act from attacking.

Sharing good news: the overlooked test

One of the most practical findings concerns how couples react to each other's good news. Psychologist Shelly Gable and colleagues found that the way a partner responds when things go right can matter as much as support when things go wrong. Suppose one partner comes home excited about a promotion. An engaged response asks questions and shares the excitement. A flat "that's nice" while checking a phone, or a reply that turns the news into a problem, leaves the person feeling unseen. Over years, these small moments add up.

Putting the research to work

• Notice bids. When your partner points something out, look up and respond, even briefly.
• Swap contempt for a complaint. Describe the problem and how you feel ("I was worried when you didn't call") instead of judging the person.
• Say thank you out loud. Make a habit of noticing and naming the things your partner does well.
• Celebrate wins. Ask follow-up questions when they share good news.
• Take a break when flooded. If your heart is racing, agree to pause for twenty minutes and come back to the topic.

Satisfaction tends to fall in many marriages during the first years, as jobs, children and in-laws crowd out time together. The couples who buck that trend are usually not the ones who never fight, but the ones who keep choosing generosity in small, daily ways.

A note of caution about the numbers

Gottman's work is influential, and some of the claims around it have been overstated. Popular accounts often say he can predict divorce with more than 90 percent accuracy. Critics such as psychologist Richard Heyman have pointed out that those models were fitted to small samples after outcomes were already known, and that accuracy looks much lower once false alarms are taken into account. The everyday lessons about contempt, kindness and turning toward each other remain sensible, but no lab can forecast any single couple's future. If a relationship involves fear, control or abuse, the right step is to seek help from a qualified counsellor or support service rather than to try harder at kindness.

Sources: Emily Esfahani Smith, "Masters of Love", The Atlantic, June 2014; Katy Butler, "The Art and Science of Love", Psychotherapy Networker; Maggie Ginsberg, "Love Is Not a Mystery", On Wisconsin; Wikipedia: John Gottman; Psychology Today: What makes marriage work; first shared by Derek Lovell at Collective Evolution.

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