Love is all maths

2004-02-13 13:00

Seattle - Two American academics claim they have conceived a mathematical model that enables them with high accuracy to foresee what many love-struck couples tying the marital knot cannot: a future divorce.

Bonding mathematics and psychology, their cupid meter forecasts whether a couple will divorce within five years "with a 94% accuracy," or whether a marriage will stand the test of time, according to psychologist John Gottman.

Gottman, a professor at the University of Washington (UoW) state, presented his findings with fellow UoW researcher, James Murray, a mathematician, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Thursday.

The two academics drew their findings from a 15-minute video recording of hundreds of married couples as they debated a contentious subject which pitted them at odds against one another.

Dubbed the "Dow-Jones Industrial Average for Marital Conversation" the model allowed the researchers to chart whether love would go awry or bloom.

The academics attributed one point for a positive interaction between a husband and wife and subtract one point for every negative interaction. The model also integrated and analysed facial expressions and heart beats.

The result: a computer readout in the form of a ratio balancing positive and negative interactions.

"The magic ratio is five-to-one," the researchers explained. Couples assigned a ratio under five-to-one are "in trouble."

"The model is astonishingly accurate," according to Murray.

"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 because they have made emotional connections," Gottman explained.

"But a lot of people don't know how to connect or how to build a sense of humour, and this means a lot of fighting that couples engage in is a failure to make emotional connections," he said.

The love meter also enables the researchers to forecast what would happen to a couple if they changed their behaviour to one another, the researchers claimed.

The marriage forecasters did not reveal if they had placed themselves under the mathematical crystal ball.

- AFP