The Story So Far: What We Know In regards to the Business of Digital Journalism. As they spoke, the electrodes measured the topics’ blood move, heart rates, and how much they sweat they produced. Then the researchers sent the couples residence and followed up with them six years later to see if they had been still together. From the information they gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major groups: the masters and the disasters.\n\nWhen the researchers analyzed the information they gathered on the couples, they saw clear differences between the masters and disasters. The disasters appeared calm in the course of the interviews, but their physiology, measured by the electrodes, advised a unique story.\n\nFollowing 1000’s of couples longitudinally, Gottman found that the more physiologically energetic the couples had been in the lab, the quicker their relationships deteriorated over time. The problem was that the disasters showed all the signs of arousal—of being in battle-or-flight mode—in their relationships.\n\nEven after they had been talking about pleasant or mundane aspects of their relationships, they had been prepared to attack and be attacked. This sent their heart rates soaring and made them more aggressive toward each other. For example, each member of a couple could possibly be talking about how their days had gone, and a highly aroused husband would possibly say to his wife, Why don’t you start talking about your day.\n\nThey felt calm and linked together, which translated into warm and affectionate habits, even after they fought. It is not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfy.