Behavioral landscapes and earth mover’s distance: A new approach for studying individual differences in density distributions

Abstract

Contemporary views of personality highlight intraindividual variability. We forward a general method for quantifying individual differences in behavioral tendencies based on Earth Mover’s Distance. Using data from 150 individuals who reported on their and others’ interpersonal behavior in 64,112 social interactions, we illustrate how this new approach can advance notions of personality as density distributions. Results provide independent confirmation and establish validity of existing representations of individual differences in interpersonal behavior, and identify new dimensions and profiles of personality and well-being. Benefits of the EMD method include freedom from assumptions about the shape and form of density distributions, generality of application to n-dimensional behavior captured in experience sampling studies, and natural integration of personality structure and dynamics.

Emotion socialization as a dynamic process across emotion contexts.

“…Step 4 (Exploration of interdyad differences). Interdyad differences in each set of sequences were quantified using MDS, a general data reduction technique (Hout et al, 2013) used here to identify the primary dimensions along which sequences differ (for example, see Ram, Benson, Brick, Conroy, & Pincus, 2017). For each discussion, we fit a series of MDS models with 1 to 10 dimensions, extracted and plotted measures of "stress," which indicates relative misfit between the estimated distance matrix and the observed distance matrix.…”

Comparing Signal-Contingent and Event-Contingent Experience Sampling Ratings of Affect in a Sample of Psychotherapy Outpatients

“…Earth Mover's Distance. As articulated above (and see Figure 2), one can calculate the dissimilarity of two landscapes (i.e., two-dimensional density distributions) by estimating the work needed to equate them using EMD (see Ram et al, 2017 for computational details). To test for within-subject differences in the configuration of the affective (valence-arousal) landscape as a function of the type of assessment schedule, we computed the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) between an individual's signal-contingent and event-contingent landscapes using the emdist package in R (Urbanek & Rubner, 2012).…”

“…Taken together, context appears to moderate affective ratings. Importantly, our findings suggest that event-contingent schedules and signal-contingent schedules should not be treated interchangeably in the assessment of affect over time; and concurrent modeling of two-dimensional landscapes (Ram et al, 2013(Ram et al, , 2017 offers new ways to examine ESM ratings of affect for research and clinical purposes. Ultimately, we hope our study encourages ESM researchers interested in describing dynamic affective processes give thoughtful consideration to what assessment schedules and modeling approaches would be optimal for their particular scientific questions.…”

“…The entropy metric reflects the total variability in the affective circumplex space without characterization of a particular affective style. Conceptually, entropy describes how compact or diffuse is the area of a two-dimensional valence-arousal space, or the "island" that individuals' tend to endorse over the assessment period (Ram, Benson, Brick, Conroy, & Pincus, 2017). We hypothesized that the average level of entropy would be higher for randomly prompted signalcontingent affect ratings than event-contingent affect ratings (H3).…”

“…Lastly, we used Earth Mover's Distance (EMD; Rubner, Tomasi, & Guibas, 2000) as metric to quantify the omnibus similarity of two affective landscapes (Ram et al, 2013(Ram et al, , 2017.…”