PhD defence Anastasiia Galkina

Keywords: Experience Sampling Methodology, Ecological Momentary Assessment, Mixed-Effects Modeling, Dyadic ESM

"Dear Diary: Advances in Experience Sampling Methodology Studies"

How do people experience their daily lives, moment by moment? And what can these fleeting moments tell us about who we really are? This thesis uses a diary-like method — where participants answer short questions on their smartphones several times a day — to better understand human behavior and emotions in everyday life.

The thesis tackles three questions. First, it develops new tools to reliably measure honesty-related traits and motivations in daily life, finding that the drivers of honest and dishonest behavior are distinct rather than opposite poles of the same motivation. Second, it examines how partners in romantic relationships influence each other's emotional states throughout the day, showing that positive emotions are more contagious between partners than negative ones. Third, it addresses a technical but important problem: when data from these diary studies are heavily skewed — for instance, because most people report low negative emotions most of the time — standard statistical methods give distorted results. The thesis proposes a more accurate alternative.

Together, these contributions make diary-based psychological research more reliable, more precise, and more useful for real-world applications such as personalized therapy and behavior change interventions.

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