Softened Startup
Peer-Reviewed
Gottman's term for beginning a difficult conversation without attack.
Gottman's term for beginning a difficult conversation without attack. Instead of a hard startup ("You always do this..."), a softened startup: (1) describes the situation objectively, (2) names your feeling using an I-statement, (3) makes a positive need request. Research shows the first three minutes of a conflict conversation largely predict its outcome.
Evidence
Peer-Reviewed
Softened startup, raising an issue gently rather than with criticism or contempt, earns Peer-Reviewed as a descriptive Gottman construct. Harsh versus soft startup is reliably coded in the Love Lab program and is one of the better-supported predictors of how a conflict conversation unfolds (Specific Affect Coding System; Heyman, 2001). The star reflects this descriptive, correlational evidence rather than the marketed divorce-prediction precision attached to the wider Gottman brand.
Origin
John Gottman
Sources
- The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work — John Gottman, 1999