Beyond challenge-seeking and skill-building: Toward the lifespan developmental perspective on flow theory

"It Is as if I Gave a Gift to Myself": A Qualitative Phenomenological Study on Working Adults' Leisure Meaning, Experiences, and Participation

Leisure participation is a fundamental human and occupational right throughout life for working people, particularly in adulthood. A total of 28 working adults representing diverse regions of Turkey, from middle-class backgrounds, aged between 25 and 50, and without any known health conditions, were interviewed to gain insights into their leisure participation during the period September 2021-May 2022. The acquired data were analysed using the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach. The analysis identified six main themes and twenty-two subthemes: the meaning of leisure, recovery from work, facilitators and barriers, well-being, occupational injustice, and flow of life. Participants distinguished between "free time" and "leisure time", defining the latter as purposeful engagement in enjoyable, meaningful activities. This study emphasises the dynamic interplay of factors influencing leisure participation among Turkish working adults, including working conditions, financial resources, social support systems, and opportunities for participation, with some effects of COVID-19 pandemic. One can shift from well-being to a lack of well-being, and this can result in occupational injustices that may arise in the flow of life, as unsupportive consequences of participation limitations among working adults. By acknowledging and enhancing leisure as a crucial aspect of well-being, this research underscores the importance of promoting resilience and holistic health among working individuals.

Reducing discrepancies between actual and ideal affect across adulthood: the roles of activity flow conduciveness, pleasantness, and familiarity

Previous findings demonstrate that people often do not feel how they want to feel, supporting the distinction between "actual affect" and "ideal affect." But are there certain activities that reduce the discrepancy between actual and ideal affect? Based on flow theory and socioemotional selectivity theory, we examined whether the discrepancy between people's actual and ideal positive affect would be smaller during activities that were more conducive to flow (a state of intense absorption and concentration), pleasant, and familiar. In Study 1, U.S. participants aged 17-79 (N = 393) reported their ideal affect and how they felt during activities with varying degrees of challenges and skills. For both low-arousal positive affect (LAP) and high-arousal positive affect (HAP), participants reported smaller actual-ideal affect discrepancies during flow-conducive activities (when skills matched challenges). Study 2 was a 14-day experience sampling study, in which Hong Kong participants aged 18-83 (Nindividual = 109) reported their momentary actual and ideal affect, and how pleasant and familiar their activities were (Nexperience = 3,815). Greater activity familiarity was associated with smaller discrepancies in actual-ideal LAP, while greater activity pleasantness was associated with smaller discrepancies in actual-ideal HAP. These findings provide insights on the activities that help people achieve their ideal affect more easily.

Forgetting ourselves in flow: an active inference account of flow states and how we experience ourselves within them

Flow has been described as a state of optimal performance, experienced universally across a broad range of domains: from art to athletics, gaming to writing. However, its phenomenal characteristics can, at first glance, be puzzling. Firstly, individuals in flow supposedly report a loss of self-awareness, even though they perform in a manner which seems to evince their agency and skill. Secondly, flow states are felt to be effortless, despite the prerequisite complexity of the tasks that engender them. In this paper, we unpick these features of flow, as well as others, through the active inference framework, which posits that action and perception are forms of active Bayesian inference directed at sustained self-organisation; i.e., the minimisation of variational free energy. We propose that the phenomenology of flow is rooted in the deployment of high precision weight over (i) the expected sensory consequences of action and (ii) beliefs about how action will sequentially unfold. This computational mechanism thus draws the embodied cognitive system to minimise the ensuing (i.e., expected) free energy through the exploitation of the pragmatic affordances at hand. Furthermore, given the challenging dynamics the flow-inducing situation presents, attention must be wholly focussed on the unfolding task whilst counterfactual planning is restricted, leading to the attested loss of the sense of self-as-object. This involves the inhibition of both the sense of self as a temporally extended object and higher-order, meta-cognitive forms of self-conceptualisation. Nevertheless, we stress that self-awareness is not entirely lost in flow. Rather, it is pre-reflective and bodily. Our approach to bodily-action-centred phenomenology can be applied to similar facets of seemingly agentive experience beyond canonical flow states, providing insights into the mechanisms of so-called selfless experiences, embodied expertise and wellbeing.

Flow experience fosters university students' well-being through psychological resilience: A longitudinal design with cross-lagged analysis

BACKGROUND

Existing research has linked individuals' flow experience - a positive affective and cognitive state of deep immersion and engagement in daily activities - and their well-being, particularly among university students. A growing number of longitudinal studies have further contributed to this understanding. However, limited attention has been given to exploring the dynamic interplay between these two variables and their underlying mechanisms (i.e., the mediator) of psychological resilience, specifically among university students in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

AIMS

To address this research gap, the present study draws on self-determination, flow and broaden-and-build theories. It examines the temporal dynamics and relationships between flow experience and well-being, and the mediating role of psychological resilience among Chinese university students.

SAMPLE

The study adopts a three-wave longitudinal design with a sample of 474 university students in Southwest China.

METHODS

Participants' flow experience, well-being and psychological resilience were measured across three time waves.

RESULTS

The findings of this study reveal that flow experience predicts well-being across the three waves and that psychological resilience mediates this prediction. This empirical evidence emphasizes the significance of both flow experience and psychological resilience in contributing to the well-being of university students over time amid COVID-19.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings enrich our understanding of the factors contributing to well-being in educational settings and provide highly relevant and timely insights for developing strategies to foster well-being among university students, especially in the transition into the post-pandemic era; findings also offer valuable insights not only for researchers but also for educators and policymakers.

Measuring optimal psychological states: Proposal of two brief versions to measure flow and clutch in athletes

Background

The study of sports experiences with high levels of performance has led to the observation of two psychological states categorized as optimal, denominated flow and clutch. The objective of this study is to design and validate two brief scales version to measure flow and clutch.

Methods

Following the MIMO (Maximum Information, Minimum Discomfort) protocol, three studies are carried out: In Study 1, we developed the short versions of the questionnaires based on theory-driven and data-driven criteria; in Study 2, we used quantitative criteria to validate the short versions; and in Study 3, we checked the final version of each scale to observe their statistical validity and their relation to other variables.

Results

The new short flow scale is made up of seven items, while the clutch scale is made up of five items. Throughout the three studies, evidence is provided of the internal consistency, invariance of the measurement models and content validity, validity related to the responding process and validity in relation to other variables.

Conclusion

This study provides two short versions to evaluate flow and clutch, which will help to continue advancing in the study of optimal psychological states in sport.

Animals in flow - towards the scientific study of intrinsic reward in animals

The concept of flow, a state of complete absorption in an intrinsically rewarding activity, has played a pivotal role in advancing notions of human well-being beyond minimising suffering towards promoting flourishing and thriving. While flow has played a fundamental role in human positive psychology, it has not yet been explored in non-human animals, leaving an enormous void in our understanding of intrinsic motivation in animals. As ethology and related fields keep progressing in uncovering complex cognitive and affective capacities of non-human animals, we propose the time is ripe to translate the concept of flow to animals. We start by embedding flow in the topic of intrinsic motivation and describe its impact on positive human psychology and potentially positive animal welfare. We then disambiguate flow from related concepts discussed in the animal literature. Next, we derive experimental approaches in animals from the canonical characteristics of flow in humans and provide guidelines for both inducing and assessing flow by focusing on two characteristics that do not necessarily depend on self-report, namely resistance to distraction and time distortion. Not all aspects of the human flow experience are (yet) translatable, but those that are may improve quality of life in captive non-human animals.

The role of students' relational identity and autotelic experience for their innovative and continuous use of e-learning

Over the last decades, using e-learning systems as an alternative format of education for traditional classroom has been growing in higher education and due to COVID-19 pandemic, this transition has been unprecedently accelerated. Although there is a large body of research on e-learning, little is known about the extent to which innovative and continuous use of e-learning systems can be influenced by students' social and motivational factors especially their relational identity and autotelic experience. This study collected data from 400 higher education students through a survey to explore the role of students' relational identity and autotelic experiences regarding their innovative and continuous use of e-learning systems while considering the mediating role of students' perception of relatedness. Collected data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling method. The results showed that students' relational identity and autotelic experience significantly influence the innovative and continuous use of e-learning. The results showed that relational identity and autotelic experience positivly associatewith innovative (β = 0.190, t = 3.544; β = 0.405, t = 7.973) and continuous use of e-learning (β = 0.188, t = 3.115; β = 0.344, t = 7.459) and relatedness plays a moderating role between relational identity and continuous use (β = 0.194, t = 4.500, p = 0.000). Relatedness weakens the relationship between relational identity and innovative use of e-learning. However, it reinforces the relationship between relational identity and the continuous use of e-learning. It was found that relatedness strengthens the relationship between autotelic experience with innovative and continuous use of e-learning. The results of this study provide evidence of how students' social and motivational factors can influence their approaches to the innovative and continuous use of e-learning systems. We discuss these results and provide agenda for future practical and professional work.

More Knowledge, More Satisfaction with Online Teaching? Examining the Mediation of Teacher Efficacy and Moderation of Engagement during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, university teachers need to spend time and energy getting used to the online teaching system and adapting their teaching materials to the new teaching mode. According to the social cognitive theory, teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and their work engagement, both of which can be important sources of efficacy beliefs, can be critical in conducing teachers’ self-efficacy for online teaching and in turn their well-being. Based on the data collected from 2763 university teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, this study explored how TPACK and work engagement contribute to teachers’ self-efficacy for online teaching, if there is any interaction between TPACK and work engagement, and how self-efficacy mediates the relationships between TPACK and teachers’ online-teaching-related emotional exhaustion, teaching satisfaction, and their intention to use online teaching in the future. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Desire for Success Awakens: Proof of Competence Restoration in a Non-competitive Environment

Pioneering studies reported that individuals who worked on a highly difficult task and experienced competence frustration beforehand would activate a restorative process and show enhanced autonomous motivation in a subsequent irrelevant activity. In this follow-up study, we explored the effect of prior competition outcome on one’s autonomous motivation in a subsequent non-competitive environment. According to our experimental manipulation, participants were randomly assigned to two treatment groups (a winning group and a losing group) and a control group. The experiment lasted for three sessions. Participants in the control group completed a single-player stop-watch (SW) task all along, while those in both treatment groups worked on a competitive SW task and competed for monetary rewards during Session 2 only. Electrophysiological data in Session 1 serve as the baseline and measure one’s trait-level autonomous motivation towards the SW game. For participants in the losing group, more pronounced difference wave of feedback-related negativity was observed in Session 3 compared with Session 1, suggesting enhanced autonomous motivation in Session 3. Such a pattern was observed in neither the winning group nor the control group. These results suggested that failure in a prior competition would activate one’s competence restoration in a subsequent non-competitive environment. Task difficulty and social competition are varied sources of competence frustration. Thus, our findings advanced understanding of the competence restorative process and helped clarify the dynamics between competition and human motivation.