Persons, Situations, and Emotions: An Ecological Approach

Peoples experience in their everyday lives has attracted much research interest in the past two decades. This book focuses on the interplay of temperament and other personality traits with characteristics of situations and events in hourly and dailey mood fluctuations. All contributors used the Time Sampling Diary (TSD) in collecting data from a variety of populations over several weeks, at least four times a day at randomly selected points of time. Part 1 of the book introduces the TSD technique with detailed instructions for data collection, coding, and analysis. Part 2 covers reports on a study of Polish bank employees. The chapters of Part 3 reflect the experience of dangerous work situations in a steel factory, the emotional adjustment of adolescents to short and long-term unemployment, and the influences of husbands daily or weekly commuting on their wives coping with housework and childcare. The chapters of Part 4 take a more philosophical approach to the material. The first contribution shows that personality traits influence well-being primarily in situations characterized by freedom of choice, the second introduces a rather new methodological approach clarifying the affinities of situations and subjective experience.