Conduct of life.

To elucidate temporal sequences among and between person and situation
variables, this work examines cross-measurement spill-overs between situation
experiences S (on the Situational Eight DIAMONDS characteristics) and personality
states P (on the Big Six HEXACO) in experience sampling data in two studies. Multilevel
modeling of lagged data at tn-1 and non-lagged data at tn grants the opportunity to
examine (a) the stability (P --> P, S --> S), (b) cross-sectional associations (S <--> P), and
(c) cross-lagged associations among and between situation experiences and personality
states (S --> P, P --> S).

Throughout the course of a day, individuals experience a number of different situations that affect how they think, feel, and behave. However, until recently, there was little research aimed at describing what factors may be related to the psychological properties of situations in individuals' everyday lives. Recent theoretical (e.g., the Situational Eight DIAMONDS) and methodological (e.g., experience sampling, Day Reconstruction Method) advances make the present research tractable. Based on the extant literature, three studies, employing different methodologies, were designed to explore whether three specific factors are related to the experience of situations: time of day, gender, and employment status. Study 1 employs data from 835 participants recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT). Participants reported a recent situation (single time-point method) and completed a 290-item measure of situations, the Comprehensive Situations Item Pool (CSIP). The results demonstrated consistent daily patterns in the experience of situations. For example, the situational characteristic Duty tends to increase throughout the day, peak at noon, decreasing thereafter. Study 2 uses an experience sampling method to further investigate the daily and weekly temporal patterns in the situational characteristics from a within-person perspective. University participants (N = 210) were contacted via smartphone and rated their situation up to 8 times per day for 7 days. The results showed that there are some similarities and differences in the temporal pattern of situations at the within-person level. Duty, for instance, exhibits a different pattern depending on the day of the week (e.g., negative and linear on weekends, but quadratic on weekdays). Overall, Study 2 demonstrates that there are clear within- and between-day patterns in situation characteristics. Lastly, Study 3 employs a full-day method using archival data from the 2013 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Participants drawn from a representative sample of Americans (N = 11,384) reported all of their situations for a recent day using the Day Reconstruction Method. The results found that, in addition to consistent daily and weekly trends, patterns for situation characteristics are related to individual differences such as gender and employment status.

My thesis exhibition will manifest a visual language I developed to express things I sense
but cannot explain. I will create a sacred space, people by paper silhouettes, to
communicate what it feels like to be alive while acknowledging different realities. Each
silhouette figure I make has its own character and expresses specific things, including
care, confusion, excitement, play, and wonder. These are all facets of my own
experiences in life. The white silhouettes are anchored to a physical reality. The
chromatic silhouettes are complicated by color. They are more difficult to make out –
they are more vulnerable and ambiguous. I am peopling the installation with many
silhouettes. This expresses the range of experiences I have had with people, as well as the
many possibilities that exist for human interaction.
I will create a translucent cylindrical environment that is specifically lit, with two layers
of fabric. I will embed over two thousand hand-cut paper figures within this environment.
One plane will represent the physical world that we all access and experience via our five senses. The other plane will express another realm – one that references spiritual or
otherwise non-physical realities.
In addition, I will exhibit a series of framed collages and a compilation of video clips that
have informed the development and process of my work.