Validity and Reliability of the Experience-Sampling Method

Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály; Larson, Reed

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_3

Cited by 685 publications

(641 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Focusing on this conception, researchers developed a number of methods for measuring positive and negative affective states, as well as general life satisfaction, which has yielded important insights about the descriptive nature of happiness (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987;Hektner, Schmidt & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007;Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985;Pavot & Diener, 2008;Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988;Watson & Clark, 1994).…”

Section: Theories Of Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

True happiness: The role of morality in the folk concept of happiness.

Phillips

Freitas

Mott

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Recent scientific research has settled on a purely descriptive definition of happiness that is focused solely on agents' psychological states (high positive affect, low negative affect, high life satisfaction). In contrast to this understanding, recent research has suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness is also sensitive to the moral value of agents' lives. Five studies systematically investigate and explain the impact of morality on ordinary assessments of happiness. Study 1 demonstrates that moral judgments influence assessments of happiness not only for untrained participants, but also for academic researchers and even in those who study happiness specifically. Studies 2 and 3 then respectively ask whether this effect may be explained by general motivational biases or beliefs in a just world. In both cases, we find evidence against these explanations. Study 4 shows that the impact of moral judgments cannot be explained by changes in the perception of descriptive psychological states. Finally, Study 5 compares the impact of moral and non-moral value, and provides evidence that unlike non-moral value, moral value is part of the criteria that govern the ordinary concept of happiness. Taken together, these studies provide a specific explanation of how and why the ordinary concept of happiness deviates from the definition used by researchers studying happiness.

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Section: Theories Of Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

True happiness: The role of morality in the folk concept of happiness.

Phillips

Freitas

Mott

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Usually, subjects were asked to describe their present experience by answering one or more brief questions several times a day over consecutive days. ESM provides repeated in-the-moment measurements of affect in a manner that is ecologically valid (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987;Peeters, Nicolson, Berkhof, Delespaul, & deVries, 2003). Compared with retrospective questionnaires and interviews, ESM reduces many of the potential biases inherent in other assessment methodologies (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004) and is generally considered the 'gold standard' (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987).…”

Section: Intervention (Mindfulness Training)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…ESM is a momentary assessment technique in which participants are prompted to report on their current experiences several times during the day. ESM is therefore ideally suited to investigate changes in people's emotional reactions to their daily environment (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987). To assess the extent to which mindfulness training increased the ability to focus attention, we chose to use an experimental approach: the Meditation Breath Attention Task (Frewen, Evans, Maraj, Dozois, & Partridge, 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Inner Peace be Improved by Mindfulness Training: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Liu

Wang

et al. 2013

Stress and Health

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This article reports a randomized controlled trial to investigate whether mindfulness training can successfully improve inner peace in participants with no known mental disorder. Fifty-seven participants were randomized to either mindfulness training (n = 29) or wait-list control (n = 28). The experience sampling method was used to measure the fleeting momentary experience of inner peace in participants. In addition, we used an experimental approach to assessing ability to focus attention: the Meditation Breath Attention Score, as well as the self-report Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Compared with the wait-list control group, mindfulness training led to an increase in scores of inner peace, Meditation Breath Attention Score and FFMQ, using analysis of repeated measures analysis of variance. Change in inner peace was not, however, mediated by changes in self-rated mindfulness (FFMQ) nor by increased attentional focus. The findings provide first evidence suggesting that using mindfulness training improves the participants' inner peace. The focus here was on the immediate effects and future studies need to use follow-up. © 2013 The Authors. Stress and Health published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Mindfulness has been called the 'heart' of Buddhist meditation (Kabat-Zinn, 2003;Thera, 1962), an essential tool to help identify the inner causes of suffering, the possibility of freedom from suffering and the means to realize such freedom (Wallace & Shapiro, 2006). Over the past 30 years, mindfulness has received a great deal of research attention within educational, health and psychiatric settings, because of its demonstrated links to psychological and physical health benefits (Baer, 2003;Keng, Smoski, & Robins, 2011). Mindfulness-based interventions, such as the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) and mindfulnessbased cognitive therapy (Barnhofer et al., 2009;Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002), have been shown to be successful in alleviating a variety of types of suffering, including reducing pain (Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, & Burney, 1985;Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, Burney, & Sellers, 1987;Samuelson, Carmody, Kabat-Zinn, & Bratt, 2007), stress (Astin, 1997), depression (Segal et al., 2002) and anxiety (Delgado et al., 2010). Several studies also demonstrate the benefits of mindfulness-based practice in non-clinical samples. For example, mindfulness training has been shown to improve one's social relationships (Bowen et al., 2006), produce increased positive affect, better immune system responses (Davidson et al., 2003) and better physiological responses to stress and negative emotions (Tang et al., 2009(Tang et al., , 2007. Moreover, mindfulness meditation is associated with changes in grey matter concentration in brain regions involved in emotion regulation (Hölzel et al., 2011).In Buddhism, inner peace is taught as the most important thing in our life. Gautama Buddha described nirvana as the ultimate goal (Mitchell, 2002). Nirvana is an ancient Sanskrit term used in Buddhism to de...

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“…ESM is an approach which employs a self-assessment tool to capture the frequency, intensity, and patterning of momentary mental processes and behaviours (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1987), such as stress, current symptoms, current activity, and positive and negative affect (Varese et al, 2011). Compared to other longitudinal methods previously employed in attachment research, ESM employs a more intensive assessment schedule involving multiple assessments per day, therefore enabling to a more fine-grained examination of attachment and attachment fluctuations on the presenting difficulties of individuals with psychosis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamics of attachment insecurity and paranoid thoughts: An experience sampling study

Sitko

Varese

Sellwood

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research

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It has been proposed that insecure attachment can have adverse effects on the course of psychosis once symptoms have emerged. There is longitudinal evidence that increased insecure attachment is associated with increased severity of psychotic symptoms. The present study examined whether in the flow of daily life attachment insecurity fluctuates, whether elevated stress precedes the occurrence of attachment insecurity, and whether elevated attachment insecurity precedes the occurrence of paranoia. Twenty clinical participants with a psychosis-spectrum diagnosis and twenty controls were studied over six consecutive days using the experience sampling method (ESM). The findings revealed that fluctuations in attachment insecurity were significantly higher in the clinical group, that elevated stress predicted a subsequent increase in attachment insecurity, and that elevated attachment insecurity predicted a subsequent increase in paranoia; this effect was not observed in auditory hallucinations once co-occurring symptoms were controlled for. Finally, although previous ESM studies have shown that low self-esteem precedes the occurrence of paranoia, attachment insecurity continued to predict paranoia even when self-esteem was controlled for. The findings suggest that attachment security may be associated with a lower risk of paranoia, and that psychological interventions should address attachment beliefs and work towards establishing a sense of attachment security.

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Validity and Reliability of the Experience-Sampling Method

Cited by 685 publications

References 34 publications

True happiness: The role of morality in the folk concept of happiness.

True happiness: The role of morality in the folk concept of happiness.

Can Inner Peace be Improved by Mindfulness Training: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The dynamics of attachment insecurity and paranoid thoughts: An experience sampling study

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