Looking from within: Comparing first-person approaches to studying experience

Abstract

Fostering our understanding of how humans behave, feel and think is a fundamental goal of psychological research. Widely used methods in psychological research are self-report and behavioral measures which require an experimenter to collect data from another person. By comparison, first-person measures that assess more subtle facets of subjective experiences, are less widely used. Without integrating such more subtle first-person measures, however, fundamental aspects of psychological phenomena remain inaccessible to psychological theorizing. To explore the value and potential contribution of first-person methods, the current article aims to provide an overview over already established first-person methods and compare them on relevant dimensions. Based on these results, researchers can select suitable first-person methods to study different facets of subjective experiences. Overall, the investigation of psychological phenomena from a first-person perspective can complement and enrich existing research from a third-person perspective.

Editorial: Working with others’ experience

“…Note, however, that authors and traditions differ in what they understand as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person methods. For instance, Lumma and Weger (2021) label interview methods, "1st person" methods, while according to Chris Larkin, 1 IPA sometimes labels itself a "3rd person" method. Our editorial advice is to constrain 1st person methods to something like introspection or auto-ethnography (studying an "I"), 2nd person methods to methods by which one interacts with other subjects as subjects (studying a "you"), such as qualitative research methods generally construed, and 3rd person methods to methods by which one studies things or their properties (studying an "it"), such as quantitative research methods broadly construed.…”

“My Scar”: Posttraumatic Loneliness as a Source of Pain and Resource for Coping

“…The present study used a qualitative, interpretive phenomenological approach ( Smith & Osborn, 2015 ), an approach most suited to revealing the perception and interpretation of participants’ emotional experiences ( Smith, 2019 ). Phenomenology research aims to uncover the structures of experiences of a certain phenomenon, as perceived by the person who experiences it ( Lumma & Weger, 2023 ). This method is designed to enhance integrative notions stemming from various levels of interpretation of the data; therefore, it was suitable for this study, which aimed to gain a deep understanding of the complex interactions between participants and people in their social surroundings, along with their perceptions of these interactions.…”

Using Micro-phenomenological Interviews To Collect And Compare Lived Experiences In Virtual Reality: A Review Of Two Studies

“…Enfin, d'autres méthodes phénoménologiques de recueil d'expériences vécues existent (voir [16] et [22] pour une revue), et il serait intéressant de les tester en RV et d'en comparer les résultats à ceux obtenus par les entretien d'explicitation. Un bon candidat à une telle comparaison serait par exemple l'auto-confrontation [47] avec une vidéo 1ère personne.…”

“…L'expérience en première personne est même devenue un enjeu crucial pour la science de la cognition selon certains auteurs [32,51]. Ainsi, après la phase behavioriste et cognitiviste qu'a connue la psychologie [50], qui déniait la valeur des vécus des sujets dans les expérimentations, la prise en compte expérimentale de l'expérience en première personne des sujets semble reprendre une place de choix [16,22].…”