In plain language
When a client walks into a psychologist's office, the practitioner's job is to work out, as quickly as possible, which psychological processes to target to help that specific person. Standard practice assumes that processes shown to be helpful on average — such as acceptance, mindful awareness, or assertive communication — will be helpful for everyone. This paper asked whether that assumption actually holds: are any processes universally beneficial for well-being, or do the most important drivers differ from person to person?
The researchers ran three intensive daily diary studies (n = 44, 37, and 141), each with more than 50 measurement occasions per person, covering three different process measures (the PBAT, Psy-Flex, and FIAT-M) and a range of well-being outcomes. They used an idiographic algorithm, i-ARIMAX, to estimate the strength of each process-outcome link within each individual, then treated each person as a study in a meta-analysis to quantify how much the links varied between people.
Heterogeneity was far higher than what is typically seen in meta-analyses of separate studies: although several processes showed group-level effects, no process was universally beneficial at the individual level. For example, being assertive showed no group-level link to loneliness, yet had significant individual-level effects running from positive to negative — assertiveness made some people feel less lonely and others more lonely. The authors propose i-ARIMAX as a practical tool for screening candidate processes and guiding genuinely personalized interventions.
Key findings
- Process-outcome links varied dramatically between individuals: I² heterogeneity was never below 0.61 and typically above 0.75, far exceeding the median I² of about 21% found in conventional meta-analyses of studies.
- Although several processes showed significant group-level (pooled) effects, no process was universally beneficial when examined person by person.
- Being assertive showed no group-level link to loneliness, yet had significant individual-level effects ranging from positive to negative — for one illustrative person assertiveness predicted more loneliness, for another less.
- Expressing feelings was associated with lower loneliness for about 14% of people (beta < −0.31) but with higher loneliness for about 11% (beta > 0.31); interpersonal conflict was the only FIAT-M process with a significant pooled link to loneliness.
- The best-fitting time-series model differed across people (the most common ARIMA pattern occurred only 33–51% of the time depending on the measure), showing a single statistical model could not describe all participants.
- The ergodic assumption of model consistency was severely violated in all three data sets, and the size and pattern of i-ARIMAX betas may be useful for selecting targets for personalized intervention.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., Sahdra, B., Hayes, S. C., Hofmann, S. G., Sanford, B., Stanton, C., Yap, K., Fraser, M. I., Gates, K., & Gloster, A. T. (2024). A personalised approach to identifying important determinants of well-being. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 48, 552–573. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-024-10486-w
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2024personalised,
title = {A Personalised Approach to Identifying Important Determinants of Well-being},
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Sahdra, Baljinder and Hayes, Steven C. and Hofmann, Stefan G. and Sanford, Brandon and Stanton, Cory and Yap, Keong and Fraser, Madeleine I. and Gates, Kathleen and Gloster, Andrew T.},
journal = {Cognitive Therapy and Research},
year = {2024},
volume = {48},
pages = {552--573},
doi = {10.1007/s10608-024-10486-w}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.