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Experience sampling methods are essential tools for building a modern idiographic approach to understanding personality. These methods yield multiple snapshots of people's experiences over time in daily life and allow researchers to identify patterns of behavior within a given individual, rather than strictly identify patterns of behavior across individuals, as with standard nomothetic approaches. In this article, we discuss the origin and evolution of idiographic methods in the field of personality and explain how experience sampling methods function as modern day idiographic methods in this field. We then review four primary ways in which experience sampling methods have been used to foster idiographic approaches in personality research. Specifically, we highlight approaches that examine individual differences in temporal and behavioral distributions, situation-behavior contingencies, daily processes, and the structure of daily experience. Following a brief methodology primer, we end by discussing future directions for idiographic experience sampling approaches in personality psychology and beyond.'Novel and somewhat daring methods will be required …' (Allport, 1937; 20).In 1937, Gordon Allport challenged the field of personality to develop 'novel and somewhat daring' research methods that would embrace the rich and complex nature of human personality -those regularities in the way an individual thinks, feels, and behaves. In particular, Allport called for the use of idiographic methods, which aim to identify patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion within an individual over time and contexts, rather than to strictly identify patterns of differences between individuals, as is the case with standard nomothetic approaches. Allport's call to methodological arms is exemplified by theorists including Murray, Mischel, and many others, who have promoted more personalized and contextualized approaches to understanding the science of personality.

Each day presents an opportunity to engage in small acts of creativity. The present study aimed to understand the ecology of everyday creativity: how certain emotions may help or hinder creative pursuits and who behaves more creatively on a daily basis. We recruited a large sample of 658 young adults (17 to 25 year old; M = 19.8 years) who rated their creativity and their experience of eighteen positive and negative emotion states each day for 13 days using an Internet daily diary method. High activation positive emotions like feeling excited, energetic, and enthusiastic were the most favourable to everyday creativity. Young adults higher in these states reported the most creativity overall, and, on days when people experienced these states, creativity was higher than normal. Medium and low activation positive emotion states like happiness and relaxation were also beneficial to creativity, although not as strongly. Negative emotion states were unrelated to, or antagonistic with creativity. People higher in openness reported the most creativity, which was more strongly yoked to their emotions: They were more creative on emotionally positive days and less creative on emotionally negative days. These findings suggest that creative days are characterised by greater emotional zest and engagement, that open people are creative people, and that personality modulates the emotioncreativity link. Fostering feelings of engagement, zest, and greater openness to new experiences may be the keys to everyday creativity.

Recent experience sampling and diary studies have shown that spending time on creative goals during a day is associated with higher activated positive affect (PA) on that day. Based on models of creativity as a tool for promoting well-being, the present study examined cross-day relationships between creative activity, affect, and flourishing. A large sample of young adults (n = 658) took part in a 13-day daily diary study. Each day, they reported how much time they spent on creative activities, daily positive and negative affect, and daily flourishing. Lagged multilevel models revealed that people felt higher activated PA and flourishing following days when they reported more creative activity than usual. The other direction-PA predicting nextday creative activity-was not supported, suggesting that the cross-day effect was specific to creative activity predicting well-being. Overall, these findings support the emerging emphasis on everyday creativity as a means of cultivating positive psychological functioning.

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