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. Dynamic personality approaches emphasize that these short-term changes are not only relevant for understanding how enduring personality patterns arise but are themselves central to what personality is. Although the growing use of the experience sampling method (ESM) has made it more feasible to apply such approaches, methodological challenges limit the inferences that can be drawn about temporal personality dynamics. This paper describes the rationale, procedure, and dataset of the Personality and Contextualized Experiences (PACE) Study, a large, multi- site ESM study that comprises 1,908 undergraduates (130,402 observations) across Canada, Germany, and the United States. Of these, 714 participants completed the entire study (baseline survey, ≥ 100 ESM surveys, and follow-up survey). The PACE Study aims to advance the study of 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.