Assessing Validity and Bias of Within-Person Variability in Affect and Personality

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Farid Anvari - , Chair of Social Psychology, TUD Dresden University of Technology (Author)
  • Noëlle Z. Rensing - , University of Cologne (Author)
  • Elise K. Kalokerinos - , University of Melbourne (Author)
  • Richard E. Lucas - , Michigan State University (Author)
  • Iris K. Schneider - , Chair of Social Psychology, TUD Dresden University of Technology (Author)

Abstract

Within-person variability in affect (e.g., Neuroticism) and personality have been linked to well-being. These are measured either by asking people to report how variable they are or to give multiple reports on the construct and calculating a within-person standard deviation adjusted for confounding by the person-level mean. The two measures are weakly correlated with one another and the links of variability with well-being depend on which measure researchers use. Recent research suggests that people’s repeated ratings may be biased by response styles. In a 7-day study (N = 399) with up to five measurements per day, we confirmed that the measures of variability lacked sufficient convergent validity to be used interchangeably. We found only 1 significant correlation (of 10) between variability in repeated ratings of affect or personality and variability in repeated ratings of a theoretically unrelated construct (i.e., features of images). There was very little evidence supporting the response styles hypothesis.

Details

Original languageEnglish
JournalPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume2023
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Mendeley e8acaaa0-5a15-33af-8888-6ff48250a6bc
ORCID /0000-0003-0915-0809/work/150329856

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • emotions, measurement, neuroticism, personality, variability

Library keywords