Algebra can predict future of couples, says US study

Marriage counsellors have reacted sceptically to new research which uses mathematical formulae to predict whether unions will succeed or fail.

The scientific model, presented for the first time this week at an international conference in Scotland, claims to have a 94 per cent success rate in forecasting the compatibility of couples.

It says just two lines of algebra is needed to calculate whether a marriage is doomed to failure - the formulae having been derived from a study of 700 couples from Seattle on America's west coast.

But Dublin counsellor, Mr Ed McHale, said human relationships "could not be reduced" to simple, quantifiable behaviour patterns. "Nobody can provide an objective measure for these things."

Similarly underwhelmed, Mr Stephen Cummins, education director of Ireland's largest marriage counselling service, Accord, said such studies could at best provide a "snapshot" of marriage at a point in time.

"My fear with this study is that it presupposes life ain't going to change. But the nature of a relationship, and the glory of it, is change."

The study, a collaboration between mathematicians and behavioural scientists at Seattle's University of Washington, involved the observation of newly-married couples during a 15-minute conversation on a contentious topic, such as sex, child-rearing or money.

The couple's ability to communicate was marked using a scale that gave positive points for good signals - like smiles and affectionate gestures - and negative points for bad signals, like rolling of eyes, mocking and coldness.

The results were fed into two equations - one for each spouse - which calculated the compatibility of the couples by adding in variables such as the "influence function", the extent to which one spouse dictated the mood of the other.

The couples were checked every two years and the model predicted which marriages failed with almost complete accuracy, co-author Prof James Murray said.

However, Mr McHale, chief executive of the Clanwilliam Institute, said the study's behavioural approach was considered out-dated in the field of counselling research.

He said counsellors had moved away from prescribing solutions to facilitating couples, adding: "I think counselling and therapy will always be as much an art as a science."

Mr Cummins of Accord said: "We don't have the right to prevent marriage, or rubber stamp it, on the basis of any findings."