Randomly sampling thinking in the natural environment

Thought sampling, the experience sampling method (ESM), and descriptive experience sampling are 3 methods of randomly sampling thinking in participants ' natural environments. All use beepers that signal participants to report aspects of their experience and behavior at random intervals. Thought sampling and ESM are quantitative methods, and standard validation studies have demonstrated them to be reliable and valid. They provide insights into human experience and behavior that are difficult or impossible to attain by nonsampling methods. Descriptive experience sampling is a nonquantitative method that provides provocative descriptions of phenomena such as "unsymbolized thinking " — thoughts that occur in awareness without words, images, or any other kind of symbols—and percep-tion that has no figure-ground phenomena. One of the principal characteristics of the psychology of the last quarter of the 20th century has been the emphasis on thoughts as explanatory concepts, and yet psychologists remain quite ignorant about the characteristics of thoughts themselves. Although a complete exploration of why this ignorance has been tolerated is outside the scope of this article, two justification