Jonas de Kerf

Thanks to the growing rise in the use of experience sampling and other within-person studies (e.g., Gabriel et al., 2019; Sonnentag et al., 2024), more attention is being paid to understanding how dynamic psychological states emerge in daily work life (e.g., boredom, engagement, flow) (McCormick et al., 2020; Navarro et al., 2022). However, most empirical studies treat psychological states as continuous (e.g., Podsakoff et al., 2019). This approach (implicitly) assumes that all momentary states vary along a single continuum from very low to very high levels, rather than representing discrete (yes – no) states in which one can enter and exit. Viewing psychological states as continuous is often motivated by the practical benefits of computing global scores of their subcomponents (Chawla et al., 2020; Wulff et al., 2023). Conceptually, however, one could argue that different levels of scores on those states, as well as unique configurations of their underlying components, may reflect phenomenologically different states (Fullagar et al., 2017). Theoretical advancements could therefore become hindered because relations between antecedents and outcomes of psychological states can be masked – or even cancelled (Barends et al., 2024; de Vries et al., 2020). Specifically, a high score on one component could be compensated for by a (very) low score on the other components, and unique relationships between antecedents and outcomes and subcomponents may exist (e.g., Liu et al., 2023). These nuances are often ruled out when combining subcomponents of psychological states into global scores. In this session, Jonas De Kerf will explain how he applied person-centered techniques (Woo et al., 2024), such as multilevel latent profile analyses and factor mixture analyses, in one of his PhD studies to uncover distinct groups of momentary states based on the core components of the key variable of his research – psychological flow (Norsworthy et al., 2021; 2023). He will discuss how person-centered methods can open new research avenues and introduce recently developed extensions, including multilevel and longitudinal approaches. Finally, he will highlight common analytical challenges and implications scholars should consider when studying unique configurations of dynamic psychological phenomena.