provide optimal 220 14 Toward a Psychology of Optimal Experience experiences; successive generations find those patterns already established and are bored by them (Berger and Luckmann 1967 ). The dialectic between freedom and necessity was described by Hegel as the alternation between what he called the ‘‘world as history’’ and the ‘‘world as nature.’’ The founding fathers wrote the Constitution and designed the American political system as a spontaneous, crea- tive act. They were making history. We face the Constitution and the government as external givens; almost as natural forces like the weather or like the force of gravity. Activities that were enjoyable to those who first created its rules may be tiresome to those who feel obliged to follow them. Even though this is not why he said it, Jefferson was right in claiming that each generation must make its own revolution. Mao Tse Tung arrived at the same conclusion about the need for a permanent revolution. Politically their ideas are probably unworkable, but they point at a vital psychological need: namely, the necessity to restructure life activity to make optimal experiences possible. Flow and the Self The relationship between optimal experiences and the self is fraught with apparent paradox. On the one hand, the self is hidden during a flow experience; it cannot be found in consciousness. On the other hand, the self appears to thrive and grow as a result of such experiences. This anomaly, suggests that further exploration of the relationship might prove theoretically fruitful. Experimental social psychology has amply documented the fact that objective self-awareness is an aversive experience. This has been explained in terms of self- awareness inevitably involving self-evaluation and a failure to live up to expected standards (Duval and Wicklund 1972 ; Wicklund 1975 ). In an earlier volume in this series, it was pointed out that self-awareness produces negative affect only when the discrepancy between the actual and the ideal states is unlikely to be reduced (Carver and Scheier 1981 ). In other words, the problem with focusing attention on the self is that it reveals depressing inadequacies. A recent study using the Experience Sampling Method replicated outside the laboratory this negative association between self-awareness and affect, but found it contingent on whether the person was involved in a voluntary or obligatory activity. Self-awareness was associated with a negative experience only when the person felt he or she had freely chosen to do an activity. When doing something that had to be done, focusing attention on the self made no difference in the moods reported (Csikszentmihalyi and Figurski 1982 ). These findings suggest an alter- native explanation for why being aware of the self is not a positive experience: because self-awareness interrupts involvement in an enjoyable activity. To explore this issue further, it might be helpful to develop a model of the self that will account for the findings. The self shows itself as a pattern of information in consciousness; more spe- cifically, it is information that stands for, or represents, the information-processing Social Structure and Flow 221 organism itself. It is composed of past experiences strung together by acts of intentionality and shaped by feedback (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981 ). Being a pattern, the self requires inputs of energy to keep its order intact. Like consciousness itself, of which it is one of the contents, the self does not keep its shape unless appropriate information is constantly provided to perpetuate its existence. To put it in the simplest possible terms, the self survives by assimilating feedback to intentions. Whenever a desire arises in consciousness and the self identifies with it, turning it into an intention, the stage is set for potential self-building feedback. If the intention is accomplished, the information will be incorporated into the self, which will appear to be that much stronger the next time it shows up in consciousness. Of course, if the intention fails, the feedback will usually result in a weakening of the self. This constant interchange, which takes place below the threshold of awareness, results in the gradual modification of the self as the feedback to intentions moves from a positive to negative balance, or vice versa. Without intentions or without feedback, the self would cease to exist as an ordered pattern of information. This is the reason why religions that try to abolish the self prescribe giving up desires and purposeful actions. Renouncing worldly attachments is the central method used to destructure the self in Zen, Sufi, Yoga, Judeo-Christian, and several other spiritual traditions (Ornstein 1977 , p. 135). Most people in most cultures, however, learn to develop their selves rather than aiming to dismantle them. In fact, once a self system is established in con- sciousness, it will try to maintain itself and increase its power. It can do so by directing the energies of the organism to produce feedback congruent with its intentions. If this is true, then attention turned inwards on the self tends not to be pro- ductive. Self-consciousness does not accomplish anything—it does not produce feedback. (There are some quite important exceptions to this statement, but they can be saved for a later treatment. The statement seems to be true most of the time, and for people who are not trained to use reflection in a systematic and con- structive way. The exceptions would include philosophers, both natural and pro- fessional; artists; mystics, and psychoanalysts.) Paradoxically, when we focus attention on the self, by so doing we deprive it of the sustenance it needs. By contrast, concentration on an activity produces feedback which nurtures the self. This is especially true if the activity is freely chosen, if it presents opportu- nities for complex interactions and allows the formulation of increasingly unpre- dictable intentions. As a result of such an activity- and assuming it was moderately successful—the self emerges strengthened from the evidence of its accomplish- ments. So the self gets lost when we search for it, and reveals itself when we forget it. Presumably this is the pattern hinted at by the first two rows of Table 14.1 , where we see that a non alienated self and the ability to find flow are the best predictors of happiness. Another way to view this pattern is within Mead’s con- ceptual framework. Attending to the self reveals the ‘‘me,’’ or the self as object. 222 14 Toward a Psychology of Optimal Experience Strictly speaking, the ‘‘I’’ can never be found in consciousness. We can only sense it in action, so to speak; we know of it through its works. At best the ‘‘I’’ appears as a flicker at the periphery of vision as we pursue some difficult or improbable task. For only then is the ‘‘I,’’ or the active, self-determining agency of the self, revealed. In routine, determined, predictable activities there is no necessity to postulate the ‘‘I’’; a ‘‘me’’ will do very well. In other words, as long as actions can be explained by outside forces or by probabilistic statements that apply to all men, or to all Americans living now, or to members of my profession, a freely acting self is an unnecessary assumption. By Ockham’s law, it becomes superfluous and we need not consider it. Only when actions depart from expectations, when unlikely intentions are fulfilled, does an ‘‘I’’ become justified as an explanatory construct. In subjective experience at least, the free self becomes a reality when action bears witness to its existence. After successfully coping with unlikely challenges, the ‘‘I’’ might reappear in consciousness as the ‘‘me,’’ But it is a different ‘‘me’’ from what it had been before; it is now stronger and more competent (Smith 1968 , 1978 ; White 1959 ). In terms of this model, it might be easier to explain the hide-and-seek of the self in flow experiences. Intense involvement in a complex activity provides the most concentrated feedback for the nourishment of the self. The higher the challenges of the activity, the more unlikely it is that one can meet them and therefore the greater the experience of order that follows upon success. Enjoyment builds the self. But the self destroys enjoyment; that is, when we reflect on the self, the interaction is interrupted, concentration collapses, and the feedback stops. Thus in the long run self-awareness is inimical to the self, because it interferes with the flow of information that is necessary to maintain it. Temporary Conclusions In the hundred years since the first men assembled at Leipzig to study psychology systematically, much was learned about human behavior, the workings of the nervous system, and the symptomatology of mental disorders. But we still have very little solid knowledge about the dynamics of conscious experience, the psyche itself. Only in the past few years has the study of consciousness received a certain academic respectability (Ornstein 1977 ; Pope and Singer 1978 ). Yet as I have tried to argue, the information unfolding therein constitutes our life and should therefore be at least of passing interest to students of humankind. Of all the information contained in consciousness, perhaps the most intriguing is the self, or the bundle of signs that represents the experience in experience. The study of flow suggests that consciousness and the self are fragile structures of order that need constant inputs of information energy to expand or even to keep their form intact. The kind of information which can do this has certain common properties: it can be assimilated with neither too little nor too much difficulty; Flow and the Self 223 it presents opportunities for interaction with clear goals, rules and feedback; it allows concentration without distraction or ambiguity. Involved in such an ordered interaction system, consciousness flows without hindrance, bringing into play the ‘‘I,’’ the active dimension of the self. Optimal experience is simply this freeing the organism to experience its own, freedom. In retrospect, as we look back on our life, these are the experiences that make living worthwhile. One common misunderstanding about this theory (in the original meaning of the word, as a viewpoint, or encompassing sight, rather than in the contemporary meaning of a logical network of universal statements) is that by emphasizing the quality of experience it encourages a hedonistic, even decadent attitude. After all, as every thinker from Plato to Freud agreed, civilization is built on the harnessing of pleasure, on the postponement of gratification. But the evidence suggests that this particular Gordian knot need not baffle us further: The old dichotomy was a false one. We might have to forfeit a certain amount of pleasure to accomplish complex tasks, but we need not forego enjoy- ment. And enjoyment rather than pleasure makes life rewarding. The pessimistic conclusions of former psychologies follow from the failure to distinguish between pleasure and enjoyment-the first homeostatic, conservative, and genetically lim- ited; the second open, growth-producing, and evolutionary. It bears repeating that according to this perspective the hard-working dour Puritans must have enjoyed their lives much more than the playboys who spend their days between Cortina and Cozumel. What would it take to develop this theory of enjoyment from being just a point of view into a useful scientific tool? First, the relationships described in this chapter should be stated in more formal ways. For instance: ‘‘The strength of the self will be directly proportional to the amount of enjoyment experienced.’’ Or ‘‘The strength of the self will be inversely proportional to the amount of self- consciousness experienced.’’ When an adequate number of such statements are generated, they must be related to each other and to statements derived from other psychological theories. It is essential, for instance, that the relationships predicated by this theory be reconciled with the regularities uncovered by even widely divergent explanatory systems such as behaviorism or psychoanalytic psychology. Finally, the conditions that set thresholds and limits to the theoretical relationships will have to be discovered and codified. It is clear, for example, that there are striking individual differences in the ability to derive enjoyment from information. Are these due to temperamental differences or to prior experience? Can they all be accounted for in terms of how the self is organized? This kind of systematic appraisal of consciousness has not been started. Yet there is no scientific theory without a logical network of empirically validated statements. Will one be built in this field? It will if enough people have fun trying to build it. 224 14 Toward a Psychology of Optimal Experience References Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). 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But our species has a choice: With the development of consciousness, we have the ability to second-guess and occasionally override the instructions coded in our chromosomes. This evolutionary development has added a great deal of flexibility to the human repertoire of behaviors. But the freedom gained has its downside—too many possibilities can have a paralyzing effect on action (Schwartz 2000 ). Among the options we are able to entertain is that of ending our lives; thus, as the existential philosophers remarked, the question of why one should not commit suicide is fundamental to the understanding of human life. In fact, most attempts at a general psychology also start with the assumption that human beings have a ‘‘need’’ or a ‘‘drive’’ for self-preservation, and that all other motivations, if not reducible to, are then at least based on such a need. For example Reprinted with permission of the Guilford Press, in A.J. Elliot & C.S. Dweck (Eds.) Handbook of Competence and Motivation. New York: The Guilford Press, pp 598-608, 2005 2005 Guilford Publications Inc.. M. Csikszentmihalyi ( & ) Division of Behavioral & Organizational Science, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA e-mail: miska@cgu.edu J. Nakamura The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA S. Abuhamdeh Department of Psychology, Istanbul S ß ehir University, Istanbul, Turkey M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology , DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_15, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 227 Maslow’s hierarchy assumes that survival takes precedence over all other consid- erations, and no other need becomes active until survival is reasonably assured. But where is this will to live located? Is it nothing but a variation of the survival instincts all living organisms share, chemically etched into our genes? The last try for a comprehensive human psychology, that of Sigmund Freud, posited Eros as the source of all behavior—a force akin to the élan vital of the French philosopher Bergson ( 1944 ) and to similar concepts of life energy proposed by a long list of thinkers going back to the beginnings of speculative thought. Eros, which originally referred to the need of the organism to fulfill its physical potential, was soon reduced in Freud’s writings, and even more so in those of his followers, to the libidinal pleasure that through natural selection has become attached to the sexual reproductive act and to the organs implicated in it. Thus, ‘‘erotic’’ eventually became synonymous with ‘‘sexual.’’ This reduction of the concept of vitality to the reproductive function rested on a reasonably sound logic. The Darwinian revolution highlighted the role of sexual selection in evolution; thus, it made sense to see sexuality as the master-need from which all other interests and motives derive. A species survives as long as its members reproduce. If the drive to reproduce became well entrenched in a species, its survival would be enhanced. Following Ockham’s principle of parsimony, one might expect that as long as sexual drives are well established, other motives become secondary. Whatever men and women do, from making songs to mapping the heavens, is just a disguised expression of Eros, a manifestation of the repro- ductive drive. On closer examination, however, this single causality seems much less con- vincing. A species needs to take care of many other priorities besides reproduction in order to survive. At the human stage of evolution, where adaptation and survival depend increasingly on flexible responses mediated by conscious thought, mem- bers of the species had to learn how to master and control a hostile and changing environment. It makes sense to assume that natural selection favored those indi- viduals, and their descendants, who enjoyed acts of mastery and control—just as survival was enhanced when other acts necessary for survival, such as eating and sex, became experienced as pleasurable. The various behaviors associated with control and mastery—such as curiosity, interest, exploration; the pursuit of skills, the relishing of challenges—need not be seen as derivatives of thwarted libidinal sexuality. They are just as much a part of human nature, just as necessary for our survival, as the drive to reproduce. The ancients understood this when they coined the aphorism Libri aut liberi ‘‘Books or sons.’’ As humans, we have the option of leaving a trace of our existence by writing books (or shaping tools, raising buildings, writing songs, etc.) and thus leaving a cultural legacy, as well as leaving our genes to our progeny. The two are not reducible to each other, but are equally important motives that have become in- grained in our natures. The idea that the ability to operate effectively in the environment fulfills a primary need is not new in psychology. In Germany, Groos ( 1901 ) and Bühler ( 1930 ) elaborated the concept of Funktionlust, or ‘‘activity pleasure,’’ which 228 15 Flow Piager ( 1952 ) included in the earliest stages of sensorimotor development as the ‘‘pleasure of being a cause’’ that drove infants to experiment. In more recent psychological thought, Hebb ( 1955 ) and Berlyne ( 1960 ) focused on the nervous system’s need for optimal levels of stimulation to explain exploratory behavior and the seeking of novelty, while White ( 1959 ) and deCharms ( 1968 ) focused on people’s need to feel in control, to be the causal agents of their actions. Later Deci and Ryan (Deci 1971 ; Deci and Ryan 1985 ) elaborated on this line of argument by suggesting that both competence and autonomy were innate psychological needs that must be satisfied for psychological growth and well-being. Theories that provide explanations for why people are motivated to master and control tend to be distal. In other words, they provide sensible explanations, typically based on an evolutionary framework, for why such behaviors should have become established over many generations, in order to support the reproductive success of the individual. However, for an activity pattern to become established in a species’ repertoire, it has to be experienced as enjoyable by the individual. To explain how this happens, a proximal theory of motivation is needed. Such a theory must rely on at least four complementary lines of explanation. In the first place, it is likely that mastery-related behavior has become personally rewarding because it has evolved, through literally millions of years of trial and error, as an effective strategy to achieve other goals, such as mates and material resources. Overcoming challenges and excelling is therefore adaptive and increases chances for reproductive success. Second, one may adopt a more Freudian line and see mastery-related behavior as an internalized drive that could serve either the purposes of the id (in the case of tyrants or robber barons) or of the superego (in the case of creative, prosocial indi- viduals). In this, as in the previous case, the behavior does not serve an independent function but is a disguised manifestation of other forces seeking their own aims. Third, the person may seek out such behaviors because of innate or learned psychological needs, such as competence and autonomy. According to this explanation, the enjoyment one experiences during intrinsically motivated behavior is largely a result of the satisfaction of these basic psychological needs. This chapter deals with a fourth kind of explanation, which we call the ‘‘phe- nomenological account.’’ It tries to look very closely at what people actually experience when they are involved in activities that involve mastery, control, and autonomous behavior, without prejudging the reasons for why such experiences exist. This line of explanation assumes that the human organism is a system in its own right, not reducible to lower levels of complexity, such as stimulus–response pathways, unconscious processes, or neurological structures. These four kinds of explanations are not incompatible with each other. In fact, they are likely to be all implicated in the genesis and maintenance of mastery behavior at the individual level. Quite often, they support each other, driving the organism in the same direction. But it is also often the case that the genetically programmed instructions may come into conflict with the learned ones, or that the unconscious forces press in a direction contrary to what the phenomenological reality suggests. A General Context for a Concept of Mastery Motivation 229 The Nature of Flow The fourth of these lines of explanation, focused on events occurring in the con- sciousness of the individual, is the one here identified with the study of the flow experience. This experience emerged over a quarter-century ago as a result of a series of studies of what were initially called autotelic activities; that is, things people seem to do for the activity’s own sake. Why do people perform time-consuming, difficult, and often dangerous activities for which they receive no discernible extrinsic rewards? This was the question that originally prompted one of us into a program of research that involved extensive interviews with hundreds of rock climbers, chess players, athletes, and artists (Csikszentmihalyi 1975 ; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2002 ). The basic con- clusion was that, in all the various groups studied, the respondents reported a very similar subjective experience that they enjoyed so much that they were willing to go to great lengths to experience it again. This we eventually called the ‘‘flow expe- rience,’’ because in describing how it felt when the activity was going well, several respondents used the metaphor of a current that carried them along effortlessly. Flow is a subjective state that people report when they are completely involved in something to the point of forgetting time, fatigue, and everything else but the activity itself. It is what we feel when we read a well-crafted novel or play a good game of squash, or take part in a stimulating conversation. The defining feature of flow is intense experiential involvement in moment-to-moment activity. Attention is fully invested in the task at hand, and the person functions at his or her fullest capacity. Mark Strand, former Poet Laureate of the United States, in one of our interviews, described this state while writing as follows: You’re right in the work, you lose your sense of time, you’re completely enraptured, you’re completely caught up in what you are doing … . When you are working on some- thing and you are working well, you have the feeling that there’s no other way of saying what you’re saying, (in Csikszentmihalyi 1996 , p. 121) The intense experiential involvement of flow is responsible for three additional subjective characteristics commonly reported: the merging of action and aware- ness, a sense of control, and an altered sense of time. The Merging of Action and Awareness The default option of consciousness is a chaotic review of things that one fears or desires, resulting in a phenomenological state we have elsewhere labeled ‘‘psychic entropy’’ (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi 1988 ). During flow, however, attentional resources are fully invested in the task at hand, so that objects beyond the immediate interaction generally fail to enter awareness. One such object is the self. Respondents frequently describe a loss of self-con- sciousness during flow. Without the required attentional resources, the self-reflective 230 15 Flow processes that often intrude into awareness and cause attention to be diverted from what needs to be done are silenced, and the usual dualism between actor and action disappears. In the terms that Mead ( 1970 ) introduced, the ‘‘me’’ disappears during flow, and the ‘‘I’’ takes over. A rock climber in an early study of flow put it this way: You’re so involved in what you’re doing you aren’t thinking about yourself as separate from the immediate activity. You’re no longer a participant observer, only a participant. You’re moving in harmony with something else you’re part of. (in Csikszentmihalyi 1975 , p. 86) A Sense of Control During flow, we typically experience a sense of control—or, more precisely, a lack of anxiety about losing control that is typical of many situations in normal life. This sense of control is also reported in activities that involve serious risks, such as hang gliding, rock climbing, and race car driving—activities that to an outsider would seem to be much more potentially dangerous than the affairs of everyday life. Yet these activities are structured to provide the participant with the means to reduce the margin of error to as close to zero as possible. Rock climbers, for example, insist that their hair-raising exploits are safer than crossing a busy street in Chicago, because, on the rock face, they can foresee every eventuality, whereas when crossing the street, they are at the mercy of fate. The sense of control respondents describe thus reflects the possibility, rather than the actuality, of control. Worrying about whether we can succeed at what we are doing—on the job, in relationships, even in crossing a busy street—is one of the major sources of psychic entropy in everyday life, and its reduction during flow is one of the reasons such an experience becomes enjoyable and thus rewarding. Altered Sense of Time William James ( 1890 , Chap. 15, Sect. 4) noted that boredom seems to increase when ‘‘we grow attentive to the passage of time itself.’’ During flow, attention is so fully invested in moment-to-moment activity that there is little left over to devote toward the mental processes that contribute to the experience of duration (Fried- man 1990 ). As a result, persons deeply immersed in an activity typically report time passing quickly (Conti 2001 ). Exceptions occur in certain sports or jobs that require precise knowledge of time, but these are exceptions that prove the rule: Basketball players must learn not to dribble the ball in their own side of the court for more than 10 s; football players must learn to ‘‘manage the clock’’ in a close game. Awareness of time in these situations is not extraneous information signifying boredom, but a challenge that the person has to overcome in order to perform well. The Nature of Flow 231 The Conditions of Flow Flow experiences are relatively rare in everyday life, but almost everything—work, study or religious ritual—is able to produce them, provided certain conditions are met. Past research suggests three conditions of key importance. First, flow tends to occur when the activity one engages in contains a clear set of goals. These goals serve to add direction and purpose to behavior. Their value lies in their capacity to structure experience by channeling attention rather than being ends in themselves. A second precondition for flow is a balance between perceived challenges and perceived skills. This condition is reminiscent of the concept of ‘‘optimal arousal’’ (Berlyne 1960 ; Hunt 1965 ), but differs from it in highlighting the fact that what counts at the phenomenological level is the perception of the demands and abil- ities, not necessarily their objective presence. When perceived challenges and skills are well matched, as in a close game of tennis or a satisfying musical performance, attention is completely absorbed. This balance, however, is intrinsically fragile. If challenges begin to exceed skills, one typically becomes anxious; if skills begin to exceed challenges, one relaxes and then becomes bored. These subjective states provide feedback about the shifting relationship to the environment and press the individual to adjust behavior in order to escape the more aversive subjective state and reenter flow. Finally, flow is dependent on the presence of clear and immediate feedback. The individual needs to negotiate the continually changing environmental demands that are part of all experientially involving activity (Reser and Scherl 1988 ). Immediate feedback serves this purpose: It informs the individual how well he or she is progressing in the activity, and dictates whether to adjust or maintain the present course of action. It leaves the individual with little doubt about what to do next. Because flow takes place at a high level of challenge, the feedback one receives during the course of an activity will inevitably include ‘‘negative’’ performance feedback. From a phenomenological viewpoint, this negative feedback will not necessarily be detrimental to task involvement. Provided the individual perceives that he or she possesses the skills to take on the challenges of the activity, the valence of the feedback is of less consequence for activity enjoyment than the usefulness of the feedback in suggesting appropriate corrective measures. Indeed, it is not difficult to think of situations in which we intentionally elicit negative feedback in order to direct attention and behavior (e.g., a pianist practicing with a metronome). To summarize, clear goals, optimal challenges, and clear, immediate feedback are all necessary features of activities that promote the intrinsically rewarding experiential involvement that characterizes flow. Of course, this is not to say that these are the only factors that affect the degree to which one becomes involved in an activity. Research on task involvement suggests that the importance an indi- vidual places on doing well in an activity (i.e., ‘‘competence valuation’’) predicts the individual’s involvement in that activity (Greenwald 1982 ; Harackiewicz and 232 15 Flow Elliot 1998 ; Harackiewicz and Manderlink 1984 ), as does the congruence between task-specific, behaviorally based goals (e.g., ‘‘I want to attach a flag to my car’s antenna’’) and higher level, more abstract goals (e.g., ‘‘I want to show my patri- otism’’), with greater congruence leading to greater involvement (Harackiewicz and Elliot 1998 ; Rathunde 1989 ; Sansone et al. 1989 ). Furthermore, the personal implications an individual attributes to success or failure at an activity can affect his or her interpretation of performance feedback, which in turn has consequences for task involvement (Mueller and Dweck 1998 ). With respect to individual differences, Wong ( 2000 ) found that autonomy orientation (Deci and Ryan 1985 ) was positively related to involvement in school-related activities; absorption (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974 ), a trait construct used to measure hypnotic sus- ceptibility, and conceptually related to openness to experience, has been shown to be positively associated with experiential involvement (Glisky et al. 1991 ; Levin and Fireman 2001 ; Wild et al. 1995 ). Flow and Motivation Theories of motivation generally neglect the phenomenology of the person to whom motivation is being attributed. They explain the reason for action in functional terms, that is, by considering outcomes rather than processes (Sansone and Harackiewicz 1996 ). How the person feels while acting tends to be ignored. Yet individuals constantly evaluate their quality of experience and often will decide to continue or terminate a given behavioral sequence based on their eval- uations. Our research suggests that the phenomenological experience of flow is a powerful motivating force. When individuals are fully involved in an activity, they tend to find the activity enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding. Whatever the ori- ginal motivation for playing chess or playing the stock market, or going out with a friend, such activities will not continue unless they are enjoyable—or unless people are motivated by extrinsic rewards. Flow and Competence Motivation Perceived competence has traditionally played a central part in theories of moti- vation (Bandura 1982 ; Deci 1975 ; Hatter 1978 ; White 1959 ). These theories generally argue that intrinsic motivation is promoted by feelings of competence and efficacy. In support of this, several researchers have found that positive competence feedback is positively related to subsequent motivation to perform an activity (Deci 1971 ; Elliot et al. 2000 ; Fisher 1978 ; Harackiewicz 1979 ; Ryan 1982 ; Vallerand and Reid 1984 ). These findings are consistent with past research on flow. Our studies have found that actors who perceive that they lack the skills to take on effectively the chal- lenges presented by the activity in which they are participating experience anxiety The Conditions of Flow 233 or boredom, depending on how much they value doing well in the activity (Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre 1989 ; Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura 1989 ; Csikszentmihalyi et al. 1993 ). Simply put, if an actor feels incompetent in a given situation, he or she will tend not be motivated. However, our research also sug- gests that although perceived competence seems to be an important precondition for intrinsic motivation, it is often not a predominating characteristic of the phe- nomenological experience associated with intrinsically motivated behavior. More specifically, much of the reward of intrinsically motivated behavior is derived from the experience of absorption and interest, the epitome of which is flow. Consider the following example: A person picks up a novel to read. As she begins reading it, she senses that her abilities are not up to the task, that the material is too complex for her to appreciate fully. Feeling unable to take on the challenges of the book because her skills are lacking, she will experience anxiety or boredom, and will probably opt for a less demanding novel or activity. How- ever, if she feels that the complexities of the book are within her capacities and is able to digest the material, her decision either to continue reading the novel or to put it down will be based primarily on her quality of experience while reading the book, namely, the extent to which she finds the book involving and interesting. Emergent Motivation The phenomenology of flow further suggests that we may enjoy a particular activity because of something discovered through the interaction. It is commonly reported, for instance, that a person is at first indifferent or bored by a certain activity, such as listening to classical music or using a computer. Then, when the opportunities for action become clearer or the individual’s skills improve, the activity begins to be interesting and, finally, enjoyable. It is in this sense that the rewards of these types of intrinsically motivating activities are ‘‘emergent’’ or a priori unpredictable. The phenomenon of emergent motivation means that we can come to experi- ence a new or previously unengaging activity as intrinsically rewarding, if we find flow in it. The motivation to persist in or return to the activity arises out of the experience itself. What happens next is responsive to what happened immediately before, within the interaction, rather than being dictated by a preexisting inten- tional structure located within either the person (e.g., a goal or drive) or the environment (e.g., a tradition, script, or set of rules). The flow experience is thus a force for expansion in relation to the individual’s goal and interest structure, as well as for the growth of skills in relation to an existing interest (Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura 1999 ). Certain technologies become successful at least in part because they provide flow, thus motivating people to use them. A good example is the Internet, developed with funds made available by the U.S. Department of Defense for purposes of national security. This technology has been adapted to all sorts of 234 15 Flow unexpected uses and has made possible an enormous variety of unpredicted experiences. It partly accounts, for instance, for the spectacular success of the Linux open system software, where tens of thousands of amateur and professional programmers work hard to come up with new software for the sheer delight of solving a problem, and for being appreciated by respected peers. In the process, Linux has been making headway against much more formidable competitors, such as Microsoft, who have to pay their programmers to write software—a clear example of emergent intrinsic rewards actually trumping extrinsic rewards. In summary, quality of experience is the proximal cause of intrinsically moti- vated behavior, when an individual begins, continues, or ends an activity that is not motivated 1976; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2001 ). Yet one does not need to look at great accomplishments to realize this basic function of attention. More mundane work is just as dependent on it. In describing the workers that made industrialization possible at the dawn of capitalism, Max Weber ( 1930 , p. 71) commented on the relationship between puritanical religious beliefs and training on the one hand, and productivity on the other: ‘‘The ability of mental concen- tration … is here most often combined with … a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance. This creates the most favorable foun- dation for the conception of labor as an end in itself.’’ The late Roman Empire, the last decades of Byzantium, and the French court in the second half of the 18th century are only a few of the most notorious examples of what can happen when large segments of society fail to find enjoyment in productive life. To provide such experiences, the rulers of society had to resort to increasingly elaborate and expensive means of control and repression, or else artificial stimulations—circuses, chariot races, balls, and hunts—that drain the attention of a passive population without leaving any useful residue. Whenever a society is unable to provide flow experiences in productive activities, its members will find flow in activities that are either wasteful or actually disruptive. Conclusions The ability to enjoy challenges and then master them is a fundamental metaskill that is essential to individual development and to cultural evolution, Yet many obstacles prevent individuals from experiencing flow. These range from inherited genetic malfunctions to forms of social oppression that reduce personal freedom and prevent the acquisition of skills. But even in the most benign situations, flow may be difficult to attain. For instance, in our society at present, most parents are determined to provide the best conditions for their children’s future happiness. They work hard, so that they can buy a nice home in the suburbs, get all the consumer goods they can afford, and send the children to the best schools possible. Unfortunately, none of this guar- antees that the children will get what they need to learn in order to enjoy life. In fact, a growing number of studies suggests that excessive concern for safety, Flow and Motivation 235 comfort, and material well-being is detrimental to optimal development (Csikszentmihalyi and Hunter 2003 ; Kasser and Ryan 1993 ; Schmuck and Sheldon 2001 ). The sterile surroundings of our living arrangements, the absence of working parents and other adults who could initiate young people into the joys of living, the addictive nature of passive entertainment and the reliance on material rewards, and the excessive concern of schools with testing and with disembodied knowledge all militate against learning to enjoy mastering the challenges that life inevitably presents. Thus, understanding how flow works is essential for social scientists interested in improving the quality of life at either the subjective or objective level. Trans- forming this knowledge into effective action is not easy. 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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26 (3), 315–326. 238 15 Flow Chapter 16 The Concept of Flow Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Introduction What constitutes a good life? Few questions are of more fundamental importance to a positive psychology. Flow research has yielded one answer, providing an understanding of experiences during which individuals are fully involved in the present moment. Viewed through the experiential lens of flow, a good life is one that is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. In this chapter, we describe the flow model of optimal experience and optimal development, explain how flow and related constructs have been measured, discuss recent work in this area, and identify some promising directions for future research. Optimal Experience and Its Role in Development The Flow Concept Studying the creative process in the 1960s (Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi 1976 ), Csikszentmihalyi was struck by the fact that when work on a painting was going well, the artist persisted single-mindedly, disregarding hunger, fatigue, and dis- comfort—yet rapidly lost interest in the artistic creation once it had been completed. Copyright statement ‘‘Reprinted with permission of the Oxford University Press, Inc. in C.R. Snyder & S.J. Lopez (Eds.) Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp 89-105, 2002’’ Oxford University Press. http://www.oup.com M. Csikszentmihalyi ( & ) Division of Behavioral & Organizational Science, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA e-mail: miska@cgu.edu J. Nakamura The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology , DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_16, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 239 Flow research and theory had their origin in a desire to understand this phe- nomenon of intrinsically motivated, or autotelic, activity: activity rewarding in and of itself (auto = self, telos = goal), quite apart from its end product or any extrinsic good that might result from the activity. Significant research had been conducted on the intrinsic motivation concept by this period (summarized in Deci and Ryan 1985 ). Nevertheless, no systematic empirical research had been undertaken to clarify the subjective phenomenology of intrinsically motivated activity. Csikszentmihalyi (1975/ 2000 ) investigated the nature and conditions of enjoyment by interviewing chess players, rock climbers, dancers, and others who emphasized enjoyment as the main reason for pursuing an activity. The researchers focused on play and games, where intrinsic rewards are salient. Additionally, they studied work—specifically, surgery—where the extrinsic rewards of money and prestige could by themselves justify participation. They formed a picture of the general characteristics of optimal experience and its proximal conditions, finding that the reported phenomenology was remarkably similar across play and work settings. The conditions of flow include: • Perceived challenges, or opportunities for action, that stretch (neither over- matching nor underutilizing) existing skills; a sense that one is engaging challenges at a level appropriate to one’s capacities • Clear proximal goals and immediate feedback about the progress that is being made. Being ‘‘in flow’’ is the way that some interviewees described the subjective experience of engaging just-manageable challenges by tackling a series of goals, continuously processing feedback about progress, and adjusting action based on this feedback. Under these conditions, experience seamlessly unfolds from moment to moment, and one enters a subjective state with the following characteristics: • Intense and focused concentration on what one is doing in the present moment • Merging of action and awareness • Loss of reflective self-consciousness (i.e., loss of awareness of oneself as a social actor) • A sense that one can control one’s actions; that is, a sense that one can in principle deal with the situation because one knows how to respond to whatever happens next • Distortion of temporal experience (typically, a sense that time has passed faster than normal) • Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, such that often the end goal is just an excuse for the process. When in flow, the individual operates at full capacity (cf. de Charms 1968 ; Deci 1975 ; White 1959 ). The state is one of dynamic equilibrium. Entering flow depends on establishing a balance between perceived action capacities and per- ceived action opportunities (cf. optimal arousal, Berlyne 1960 ; Hunt 1965 ). The balance is intrinsically fragile. If challenges begin to exceed skills, one first 240 16 The Concept of Flow becomes vigilant and then anxious; if skills begin to exceed challenges, one first relaxes and then becomes bored. Shifts in subjective state provide feedback about the changing relationship to the environment. Experiencing anxiety or boredom presses a person to adjust his or her level of skill and/or challenge in order to escape the aversive state and reenter flow. The original account of the flow state has proven remarkably robust, confirmed through studies of art and science (Csikszentmihalyi 1996 ), aesthetic experience (Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson 1990 ), sport (Jackson 1995 , 1996 ), literary writing (Perry 1999 ), and other activities. The experience is the same across lines of culture, class, gender, and age, as well as across kinds of activity. Flow research was pursued throughout the 1980s and 1990s in the laboratories of Csikszentmihalyi and colleagues in Italy (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi 1988 ; Inghilleri 1999 ; Massimini and Carli 1988 ; Massimini and Delle Fave 2000 ). The research in Italy employed the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), using pagers to randomly sample everyday experience. It yielded several refinements of the model of experiential states and dynamics in which the Sow concept is embedded. The ESM and the theoretical advances that it made possible are discussed in the section on measuring flow. During the 1980s and 1990s, the flow concept also was embraced by researchers studying optimal experience (e.g., leisure, play, sports, art, intrinsic motivation) and by researchers and practitioners working in contexts where fos- tering positive experience is especially important (in particular, formal schooling at all levels). In addition, the concept of flow had growing impact outside aca- demia, in the spheres of popular culture, professional sport, business, and politics. In the 1980s, work on flow was assimilated by psychology primarily within the humanistic tradition of Maslow and Rogers (McAdams 1990 ) or as part of the empirical literature on intrinsic motivation and interest (e.g., Deci and Ryan 1985 ; Renninger et al. 1992 ). In recent years, a model of the individual as a proactive, self-regulating organism interacting with the e
