How long does it take to predict whether or not a marriage will succeed? One year? Two years?
How about 15 minutes? In the 1970s, Dr. Gottman and Robert Levenson performed a series of studies on the difference between happy and unhappy couples. To do so, they videotaped couples attempting to resolve a conflict in their relationship for 15 minutes.
At the end, they reviewed the tapes and predicted which couples stayed together and which ended up divorced. Nine years later, they followed up with the couples. Their predictions were over 90 percent accurate.