The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples [Hardcover]

John M. Gottman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0393705951 | ISBN-13: 978-0393705959

An eminent therapist explains what makes couples compatible and how to sustain a happy marriage.

For the past thirty-five years, John Gottman’s research has been internationally recognized for its unprecedented ability to precisely measure interactive processes in couples and to predict the long-term success or failure of relationships. In this groundbreaking book, he presents a new approach to understanding and changing couples: a fundamental social skill called “emotional attunement,” which describes a couple’s ability to fully process and move on from negative emotional events, ultimately creating a stronger relationship.

Gottman draws from this longitudinal research and theory to show how emotional attunement can downregulate negative affect, help couples focus on positive traits and memories, and even help prevent domestic violence. He offers a detailed intervention devised to cultivate attunement, thereby helping couples connect, respect, and show affection. Emotional attunement is extended to tackle the subjects of flooding, the story we tell ourselves about our relationship, conflict, personality, changing relationships, and gender. Gottman also explains how to create emotional attunement when it is missing, to lay a foundation that will carry the relationship through difficult times.

Gottman encourages couples to cultivate attunement through awareness, tolerance, understanding, non-defensive listening, and empathy. These qualities, he argues, inspire confidence in couples, and the sense that despite the inevitable struggles, the relationship is enduring and resilient.

This book, an essential follow-up to his 1999 The Marriage Clinic, offers therapists, students, and researchers detailed intervention for working with couples, and offers couples a roadmap to a stronger future together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“John Gottman has done it again. He has shown why he is a leader in the field of couples therapy. . . . [A]n amazing accumulation of facts, studies, and concepts that are truly useful. . . . I found myself wanting to read this book with a pen and pad in hand just so I could take notes. . . . Not only do I recommend this book, I will certainly encourage my students to read it because in the future much of this material will become expected knowledge for marriage counseling.” (Milton H. Erickson Foundation Newsletter )

“This creative and cutting-edge encyclopedic volume on marriage by the dean of marriage research, John Gottman, has something for the academic, the researcher, the clinician and surprisingly, the game theorist and mathematician...All readers will be stretched and enriched by this book. ” (Harville Hendrix, PhD, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD, coathors of Receiving Love and co-creators of Imago Relationship Theory )

“Gottman’s Science of Trust reflects his lifelong devotion to helping others improve their relationships…. [H]elpful content summaries provide easy access so that a busy practitioner of client can quickly and selectively access Gottman’s latest information as needed…. [A] noteworthy addition to any practitioner’s library.” (Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy )

“[A] text that I will recommend as essential for training marital therapists.” (PsycCritiques )

“As always, John Gottman’s cutting edge science and wide-ranging wisdom about relationships astounds and inspires. This book tells us that the science of love relationships is well on its way. We really can grasp and shape our most important relationships. ” (Dr. Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight )

“John Gottman has produced, through a lifetime of research and clinical observation, some of the most authoritative and profound insights on the inner workings of couple relationships. The work in this book takes a quantum leap further. It is a thorough and comprehensive study of one of the least understood and most important building blocks of a relationship: trust and betrayal. The Science of Trust may represent Dr. Gottmans's greatest contribution to decoding the mysteries of healthy and unhealthy relationships.” (Paul R. Peluso, PhD, Associate Professor, Florida Atlantic University )

“John Gottman, the premier thinker and experimenter in the science of couple relationships, has done it again. In his earlier concept of bids, he brought clarity to the murky idea of connection. Now, in the concept of attunement, he brings clarity to the even murkier idea of trust.” (Dan Wile, author of After the Honeymoon )

About the Author

John M. Gottman, Ph.D., is William Mifflin Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of over two dozen books, including Seven Principles to Making Marriage Work, The Heart of Parenting (with J. DeClaire), When Men Batter Women (with Neil Jacobson), Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, The Marriage Clinic, and The Science of Trust.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 9, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393705951
• ISBN-13: 978-0393705959
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.3 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Gottman, Ph.D., is world-renowned for his work on relationship stability and divorce prediction, involving the study of emotions, physiology, and communication. He was recently voted one of the Top 10 Most Influential Therapists of the past quarter-century by the PsychoTherapy Networker publication. His 35 years of breakthrough research on marriage, relationships and parenting has earned him numerous major awards.

He is the author of 190 published academic articles and author or co-author of 40 books. Dr. Gottman is the co-founder of The Gottman Institute where he currently teaches weekend workshops for couples and training workshops for clinicians. He is the Executive Director of the Relationship Research Institute, where programs have been developed for parents transitioning to parenthood and are beginning a new research project on treatment for Domestic Violence. Dr. Gottman is also in private practice in Seattle and sees couples for weekly and intensive marathon therapy sessions.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#34 in Books > Self-Help

#62 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#92 in Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#34 in Books > Self-Help

#62 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#92 in Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great advance on relationships; takes patience to read August 24, 2011

By Mark Hurwich

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Gottman's work is deservedly renowned, and this is no exception. Unlike a lot of other "next books" that are repeats of an ongoing theme with very little added, The Science of Trust feels mostly new. If you've read Gottman's other works, the parts that foundational are presented in a useful context and with additional elements, so even reading about them again creates new insights. And, of course, the focus on "trust" as a key new ingredient in successful relationships is very useful--particularly because Gottman develops it in a scientific way that takes a lot of the ambiguity out, and replaces it with clearer insight and ideas for how to operationalize it. I'm looking at my copy of the book now, and it has over 40 pages bookmarked with material I want to apply...for example the importance of building trust in ways that include space for challenging emotions, "ATTUNE" dimensions for emotional connection, dynamic models of how trust is built (or betrayed), attuning during regrettable incidents....

That said, the book is heavy reading in the later chapters. Gottman has a lot of mathematical modeling that, personally, I love--but imagine others who've read his more popularized books might find challenging, even though these parts are well explained.

My recommendation: if you're serious about relationships, and are patient, get it and read what you can. You'll learn something worthwhile.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Important, credible, useful, but not particularly enjoyable April 13, 2012

By Justin Coulson

Format:Hardcover

I wanted to give this book five stars. My shelves are full of relationship books and parenting books (my specialty), and Gottman is prominent among them. Gottman's credibility is essentially unsurpassed, and his work has been enormously influential in both a research and a practical sense. As soon as I heard about The Science of Trust I ordered it, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to delve into Gottman's latest offering. Unfortunately, my five-star hopes were not met.

The book contains valuable information, no doubt. However the book is far too technical for a non-professional audience. For example, Gottman throws around psychological jargon and statistical terms (such as "discriminant function analysis") freely with limited or no explanation for a lay-audience. Additionally, at least three chapters are dedicated to the mathematics and story behind "Game Theory". For the mathematically inclined I'm sure this is great. For those wishing to learn about relationships it is tedious. Even for clinicians/therapists much of the material is superfluous and lacking in immediate practical application.

Gottman's previous offerings (in trade books) have been wonderfully accessible, full of practical detail, and enjoyable to read and talk about. I found the content of the book fell into two categories for me: superb and informative, or dry, tedious, and unnecessary. As such, I believe this book could have been written in around half the pages.

Another quibble that started as a minor one but grew as the book progressed... the number of spelling and grammatical errors was simply breathtaking. The editorial team have shown a lack of attention to detail that was disappointing.

I wish I could give this book more stars. I'm a Gottman admirer, and have spent my life working towards improving family life. In the end, reading The Science of Trust became a chore. I was glad to finally finish the book and put it back on the shelf.

Justin Coulson PhD

58 of 76 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Scientific Approach April 18, 2011

By Rebecca of Amazon HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

You can hardly read a book or magazine article about marriage without the author mentioning John M Gottman's work. He studies couples in a lab and comes up with some interesting facts. Like one thing I didn't know before reading this book was that couples who get therapy are more likely to divorce. This book also explains how couples build trust and what erodes trust. Basically John M. Gottman believes that "emotional attunement creates intimate trust." Throughout the book there are real-life interactions. In one place there are 16 pages of dialogue. Since John Gottman has recorded so many couples talking about their problems he has learned how to analyze his data efficiently. If you are interested in math or science then this book will also be especially interesting to you.

~The Rebecca Review