Can the similarities and differences between persons’ daily situations provide clues to the theoretic understanding of person-situation interactions?
Using a Day Reconstruction Method design (Kahneman et al., 2004), and drawing on modern idiographic (Conner et al., 2009) and within-person research (Fleeson, 2007), a series of studies analyzed person-situation interactions in the course of a day for a sample of 171 respondents.
Multilevel modeling analyses showed (a) substantial within-person variability in the relatively short span of a day, (b) significant situation effects, and (c) significant effect of persons’ situational concerns and intentions upon fluctuations in quality of experience. This paper will argue that the combination of findings (a) and (b) goes against the interpretation that persons merely “react” to situational features, and instead points to how subjective and agentic features of the person shape experience by way of guiding the person’s interaction with the situations of everyday life.