The Science of Relationships

[Music]

i’ve often heard the phrase

life imitates art or is more apt in my

case

art imitates life however i never

realized

just how powerful that connection can be

until in the middle of an interview

when someone asked me about my life and

how it’s affected my work

as a scientist who studies data

objectively collected from others

i never took time to pause and reflect

on my own life and this beautiful

connection

you see i’m a relationship researcher i

was a former full-time academic

with a research lab devoted to studying

the science of relationships

and am now currently focusing on the

therapeutic side of relationship work

my goal has been to study from a

scientific perspective

what love is why some relationships

thrive

while others are doomed to fail as well

as to carefully analyze and shed light

on the attachment bond or our human

connection

after several years of focusing on this

work and meeting an incredible network

of people along the way

i have a better appreciation for the

relationships in my own life

in hindsight i have a better

understanding of how deeply personal

this journey has been for me

today i’m here to discuss the science of

relationships

as well as how looking back on our past

relationships

can enhance both our current and future

connections

in my early to mid 20s i was in a

relationship that went through the

stages of dating to marriage to

divorce all very quickly and very

publicly

as we live in a social media age each

party

and carefully curated component of the

planning process played out on my

facebook feed

then once it all came crashing down

i spent hours days even weeks

painstakingly sifting through the

remnants of my past

with the goal of erasing what was and

what could have been

i was the first of my friends to get

married and the first to get divorced

and this all made for some very

interesting gossip

fast forward a few years to my

experimental psychology classroom

in which i’m grasping at straws to

cultivate an appreciation

for statistics and research methodology

in one of those classes that students

love to hate or as many call it a

necessary evil of the major

to generate interest and help students

see the applicability of research to the

real world

and not just a grade i pulled from all

of the subject areas

neuropsychology educational psychology

and the list goes on i realized that as

soon as i began to discuss relationships

blank stares turned into active

participation

as students began to ask the questions

about the important relationships in

their lives

just then i realized something i got

them engaged

and i got them to care

relationship science is a

multi-disciplinary field

consisting of subject areas such as

psychology

biology sociology anthropology and

philosophy

a variety of perspectives all converge

to help explain the complexity

and awesomeness that is love

so now that we know a little bit about

what relationship science is

let’s examine how many people there are

out there for us to love

which involves estimating our pool of

eligible partners

the drake equation conceptualized by dr

frank drank in 1961

is an equation used to estimate the

number of civilizations

capable of supporting communicative

extraterrestrial life in the milky way

galaxy

yes you heard that correctly it’s an

equation used to help us to determine

how many aliens are out there the

equation is an approximation

and the thought behind it is that the

series of over and under estimations

will eventually cancel each other out

and provide us with a relatively

accurate final number

dr peter backus economics lecturer in

the uk

later adopted this equation to determine

how many women

they were out there for him to love by

using available population parameters

and the specifics as to what he was

looking for in a mate

while i’m happily married i’d like to

illustrate this for you

using the information that i used when i

entered the wonderful

yet sometimes agonizingly frustrating

world

of online dating now i was looking to

meet someone in my geographic location

and based upon information from the u.s

census bureau

new york city has eight million eight

thousand

two hundred and seventy eight people

that i can potentially date

forty seven point thirty eight percent

of these people are male

which equates to a total of three

million seven hundred and ninety four

thousand

three hundred and twenty two potential

men that i could date

of these people 15.77 percent are

between the ages of 35 and 44

leaving me with 598

364 potential partners

education is important to me and being

that 37.4

of people have a bachelor’s degree or

higher this leaves me with

223 788 potential partners

now i’m not that religious but i am of

the jewish faith

and religion is more likely to become

important when thinking about traditions

or a future family

since 13 of the population in new york

city is jewish

this leaves me with 29 ninety two

potential partners

fifty three percent of the population is

unattached and

being that i want my partner and i to be

in an exclusive relationship

this leaves me with fifteen thousand

four hundred and eighteen

potential men now i’m five nine

and i tend to feel uneasy when i’m much

taller than my partners

no disrespect to anyone who’s shorter

but this is something that makes me

personally uncomfortable so since 67

percent of men are five nine or taller

this leaves me with ten thousand three

hundred and thirty potential partners

now peter back is said that he would

find five percent of women attractive

and five percent of women would find him

attractive

however dr hannah fry mathematician and

the author of mathematics of love

noted that this number was much too

conservative and instead

opted for 20 percent so

if i’m likely to find twenty percent of

these men attractive that’s two thousand

sixty six men

twenty percent are likely to find me

attractive that’s four hundred and

thirteen men

and twenty percent i’m likely to get

along with in terms of personality

out of the 8 million 8 278

people in new york city that i could

potentially date

this leaves me with 82 men yes

82 men now you can choose to view this

either

positively or negatively for those of

you who view it negatively

finding your match is kind of like

finding a needle in a haystack

in hindsight had i realized just how

quickly the dating pool shrank

i might not have approached online

dating so optimistically

so maybe ignorance is bliss however

if you choose to view the glass as half

full think about how

just incredibly rare and special the

person you’re with

or meant to be with actually is

silver lining so now that we know

how many people are out there for us to

love

how do we set ourselves up for

relationship success

a big component of relationship

satisfaction and success

involves effectively communicating with

the people we love

renowned psychologists john gottman who

studied healthy and unhealthy

relationships

discussed the four horsemen which are

criticism

contempt defensiveness and stonewalling

the presence of these horsemen during an

argument is so detrimental

as it can escalate the negative

interaction between partners during an

argument

and it can even predict divorce it’s not

what we

fight about that leads to problems but

how we fight

i’ll say that again it’s not what we

fight about

but how we fight that matters

many of the couples that i work with

once having learned about the four

horsemen note

that had they been better prepared to

effectively communicate with their

partners

their relationships may have fared

better hindsight’s 20 20.

research supports this in that just by

learning about the four horsemen

you can enhance your relationships so

you can use the science

to examine your communication and

improve your relationships going forward

criticism involves attacking your

partner’s character

for example you left the clothes on the

floor

because you’re such a slob content

is criticism coming from a place of

superiority

think criticism with a bit of sarcasm on

top

an example is well of course you didn’t

get that promotion

you can’t even get it together at home

this will last with your partner long

after the fight is over

defensiveness is when a person rather

than owning what he

or she or they did wrong calls his her

or their partner out on something else

so rather than owning that you left your

clothes in a pile on the floor you say

well what did you expect me to do you

took forever getting ready this morning

i’ll get to stonewalling in a bit to

counteract criticism and contempt

use i statements or eye language

in which you focus on the behavior

rather than attacking your partner

so you may say when you leave your

clothes on the floor

i get upset because i’m already running

late trying to get out of the house in

the morning

yes this does take longer but by doing

this

you’re letting your partner know what

you’re thinking as well as how his her

or their behavior

is affecting you it doesn’t mean you’ll

see eye to eye

but by doing this you’re communicating

what the issue is and why it’s upsetting

to you

to counteract defensiveness own it

whatever it is if you own what you do

wrong

hopefully your partner will follow suit

and then you’ll create a culture of

appreciation and respect

finally we have stonewalling now i’m

sure many of you have heard of the fight

or flight response

but it’s actually fight fight or flood

fight flight or flood

if you get nothing else out of this talk

today you now have that fun little

tongue twister

stonewalling or flooding is when a

person completely checks out

it’s a situation in which in the middle

of an argument

a person goes completely blank and looks

as if they’re not even processing

because in that moment they can’t

so what does the other person do they

get louder

and angrier further escalating that

argument

instead take a break

yes for many this is difficult

especially when in the middle of a

heated argument

but by doing this you’re able to bring

that physiological arousal level down

so that you can come back to one another

and have a much more productive and

meaningful conversation

so just learning about the four horsemen

can enhance your relationships

you can use this information to examine

your communication

rather than letting these tactics erode

it forcing you to look back

on what could have been

so as you can see this amazing science

has implications for our everyday lives

but as art and science imitates life

my journey into this field was a result

of a personal struggle

could i have used the principles of

relationship science to have avoided

heartache

perhaps but remember it’s always easy

to clearly evaluate a situation after it

happens

as noted psychologist and economist

daniel kahneman put it

everything makes sense in hindsight

i’ve made the conscious decision not to

look back

and continually over analyze my past

which

i often have the tendency to do

instead i’ve turned my past into a

positive future

in my current role i help others ask the

meaningful

questions they have about the important

relationships in their lives

the most valuable lesson that i’ve

learned is that your past

shapes your present and sets a

trajectory for your future

so you can use the knowledge of the

value gained in hindsight

to help inform the decisions you make in

your current and future relationships

now that’s something worth re-examining

the past four

thank you

you