Behavioral indicators of good and bad relationships, with psych researcher Brandi Fink

An interview with Brandi Fink, a psychology researcher and an assistant professor at UNM Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Brandi has done a lot of work analyzing the behavior of couples and families experiencing problems, including issues of physical abuse, emotional distress, and drug/alcohol abuse. She once worked with the famous relationship researcher and therapist John Gottman. Brandi and I talk about behavioral indicators of healthy and unhealthy relationships.

Links to the episode:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Youtube

Topics discussed include:

• The goals of analyzing and logging the video-taped behaviors of couples/families
• Some of the common physical and verbal behaviors (like eye rolls and other indicators of contempt) that indicate trouble in a relationship, and those that can indicate relationship improvement or health
• How high heart rate variability (having a heart beat that changes speeds frequently) is linked to being more mentally disciplined and emotionally healthy
• Tips for improving a relationship
• Brain scan research Dr. Fink has done related to how alcohol affects the brain and how alcohol leads to relationship issues
•  The challenges of creating a behavior coding system (not wanting to go too micro-level or too macro-level)
• Whether cultural differences can impact the analysis of behavior

Here are some resources and articles and studies related to some of the stuff we discussed:

• Dr. Fink’s study Frontal Alpha Asymmetry in Alcohol-Related Intimate Partner Violence
• Article titled At UNM, researchers hope to modernize domestic violence treatment, about Dr. Fink’s work.
• Wikipedia entry for John Gottman, considered the father of science-based couples therapy.
• About the SPAFF system for coding relationship behavior, which Gottman created.
• Paul Ekman’s FACS program for recognizing facial patterns
• Paul Ekman’s work on showing cross-culture alignment of facial expressions
• Gottman site’s explains the most important negative behaviors (contempt, criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling).
• Information about heart-rate variability
• A summary of Alan Marlatt’s work on how one’s perceptions and ideas about alcohol affect how alcohol affects them
• The Simple Video Coder tool that Dr. Fink and her colleagues developed to aid in logging behavior