Biomedical subjects

Robert Wayne Levenson

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Wayne Levenson.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Observing gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples' relationships: mathematical modeling of conflict interaction.

Two samples of committed gay and lesbian cohabiting couples and two samples of married couples (couples in which the woman presented the conflict issue to the man, and couples in which the man presented the conflict issue to the woman) engaged in three conversations: (1) an events of the day conversation (after being apart for at least 8 hours), (2) a conflict resolution conversation, and (3) a pleasant topic conversation. The observational data were coded with a system that categorized specific affects displayed. Data were weighted and two time-series created, one for the husband and one of the wife. The time series were modeled with nonlinear difference equations (Cook et al., 1995), and parameters were estimated that indexed uninfluenced steady state, influenced steady state, emotional inertia, repair effectiveness and threshold, and the power of positive and negative affect of one partner to affect the other partner.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

A two-factor model for predicting when a couple will divorce: exploratory analyses using 14-year longitudinal data.

This article examines 14-year longitudinal data and attempts to create a post hoc model that uses Time-1 data to "predict" the length of time the marriage will last. The sample consists of the 21 couples (of 79 studied) who divorced over a 14-year period. A two-factor model is proposed. One factor is the amount of unregulated volatile positive and negative affect in the marriage, and this factor predicts a short marriage length for the divorcing couples. A second factor is called "neutral affective style," and this factor predicts a long marriage length for the divorcing couples. This model is compared to a Time-1 model of ailing marriage in which Time-1 marital satisfaction is used to predict the timing of divorce.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Generating hypotheses after 14 years of marital followup; or, how should one speculate? A reply to DeKay, Greeno, and Houck.

Gottman and Levenson (2002) for the purpose of post hoc speculation, developed a number of ordinary least squares regressions to model the length of marriage of divorcing couples in a 14-year longitudinal study. We believe that our analyses are appropriate for our purpose. We do not agree with DeKay, Greeno, and Houck (2002) that a duration-model approach would have been more appropriate, and instead argue that the analyses used are more powerful and generate more interesting speculations. When speculating, one makes an important contribution just by being interesting, not necessarily by being right. The purpose of post hoc speculation is to generate discussion, and we are pleased that even at the outset we have accomplished this goal. In this reply to DeKay et al., we argue that the two-process model for earlier versus later divorcing that we propose is both interesting and clinically useful.

Divorce↗