Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by mylonpruett
The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples by John Gottman
4.0
Summary: A super dense, incredibly detailed discussion on the mathematics behind trust in relationships. If that sentence intrigues you, read this book; if it was boring, this is not your book.
If you haven’t heard of John Gottman, he is the founder of the love lab, and institute that has spent over 14 years studying relationships and predicting (with a 95% accuracy) whether a relationship will last. So, when he decided to write a book on the science behind trust, it was something I was super interested in reading.
I’ve read a several other books by John Gottman, so I wasn’t really prepared for how mathematically dense this book was. Most of his other books center around explaining the principles behind an effective relationship like you would explain them to any normal person. This book is focused on explaining in precise detail the mathematical game theory models they used to actually measure trust between two people in a relationship.
The idea that you can use mathematics to measure trust might sound wild at first, because I promise it sounded crazy to me too, but by the time I was done with this book I was pretty sold. They were able to study several interactions between couples and using some precise, mathematical modeling built on game theory, determine the levels of trust and untrustworthiness between two people in a relationship.
It’s worth saying that the book is incredibly well written, and Gottman does take the time to explain the principles of game theory to people that don’t already understand it, but it’s still pretty complicated. To enjoy this book, which I did, you really need to like the idea of reading a book about the intersection of relationships and mathematics. If the premise of measuring trust in a relationship, using math and game theory is intriguing to you then you should definitely read this book. But if that sounds super frustrating/boring/mind numbing then I would direct you to one of his other books instead of this one.
If you haven’t heard of John Gottman, he is the founder of the love lab, and institute that has spent over 14 years studying relationships and predicting (with a 95% accuracy) whether a relationship will last. So, when he decided to write a book on the science behind trust, it was something I was super interested in reading.
I’ve read a several other books by John Gottman, so I wasn’t really prepared for how mathematically dense this book was. Most of his other books center around explaining the principles behind an effective relationship like you would explain them to any normal person. This book is focused on explaining in precise detail the mathematical game theory models they used to actually measure trust between two people in a relationship.
The idea that you can use mathematics to measure trust might sound wild at first, because I promise it sounded crazy to me too, but by the time I was done with this book I was pretty sold. They were able to study several interactions between couples and using some precise, mathematical modeling built on game theory, determine the levels of trust and untrustworthiness between two people in a relationship.
It’s worth saying that the book is incredibly well written, and Gottman does take the time to explain the principles of game theory to people that don’t already understand it, but it’s still pretty complicated. To enjoy this book, which I did, you really need to like the idea of reading a book about the intersection of relationships and mathematics. If the premise of measuring trust in a relationship, using math and game theory is intriguing to you then you should definitely read this book. But if that sounds super frustrating/boring/mind numbing then I would direct you to one of his other books instead of this one.