within-person dynamics
Definition
Within-person dynamics refers to systematic change processes that unfold inside individuals across time, captured by examining how variables fluctuate together within the same person rather than between different people. This distinction matters because a strong association observed across individuals may reflect stable trait-level differences rather than genuine temporal coupling. In a three-wave longitudinal study of right-wing Americans, obsessive passion and deliberate engagement with radical content reciprocally predicted one another across six-week intervals at the within-person level, whereas obsessive passion and support for political violence showed no within-person dynamics in either direction despite a strong random-intercept correlation of .58. The absence of within-person coupling between passion and violence support indicated that their association was carried entirely by stable individual differences, not by one variable incrementally driving the other over time.
Sources: Bélanger et al. (2026)
Related Terms
- political violence (1 shared article)
- radicalization (1 shared article)
- obsessive passion (1 shared article)
- deliberate engagement (1 shared article)
Applications
Within-person Dynamics and Obsessive Passion
Obsessive passion exhibited clear within-person dynamics in relation to deliberate engagement, with each variable reinforcing the other across six-week intervals in a sample of far-right Americans. The reciprocal coefficients were statistically significant in both directions, obsessive passion predicting subsequent engagement and engagement predicting subsequent obsessive passion, consistent with a self-reinforcing cycle rather than a unidirectional motivational sequence.
Sources: Bélanger et al. (2026)
Within-person Dynamics and Deliberate Engagement
Deliberate engagement with radical people and settings was the construct that showed meaningful within-person dynamics alongside obsessive passion, distinguishing it from incidental exposure, which carried no equivalent longitudinal signal. This pattern situated the coupling of engagement and obsessive passion at the level of intraindividual change, rather than as an artifact of who, in general, scores high on both variables.
Sources: Bélanger et al. (2026)
Within-person Dynamics and Support for Political Violence
Support for political violence showed no within-person dynamics with either obsessive passion or deliberate engagement across the three-wave study, with all relevant within-person paths falling far short of significance. Its strong observed association with obsessive passion was attributable entirely to stable between-person differences, a finding that challenges models assuming a sequential motivational pathway from passion through engagement to violence endorsement.
Sources: Bélanger et al. (2026)
