Capturing the temporal dynamics of personality in daily life: The Personality and Contextualized Experiences (PACE) Study

Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors constantly change in everyday life, and dynamic personality theories emphasize the role of these short-term changes for understanding how momentary states give rise to more enduring personality patterns. Although the growing use of the experience sampling method (ESM) has made it more feasible to examine such theories, methodological challenges limit the inferences that can be drawn about temporal personality dynamics. This paper describes the rationale, procedure, and first half of the dataset of the Personality and Contextualized Experiences (PACE) Study, a large, multi-site ESM study that currently comprises 1,126 undergraduates (78,101 observations) across Canada, Germany, and the United States. Of these, 421 participants completed the entire study (baseline survey, ≥ 100 ESM surveys, and follow-up survey). The PACE Study aims to advance the study of temporal personality dynamics by combining a large sample with several methodological features targeting key design and measurement aspects for accurately capturing and interpreting these dynamics. The features encompass an experimental comparison of two sampling designs, retrospective assessments of missed states, and a personalized assessment of situational information. The study further includes a newly developed global self-report questionnaire intended to capture aspects of people’s dynamic patterns of states without requiring ESM data.