Content area
Full Text
J Happiness Stud (2009) 10:133148
DOI 10.1007/s10902-007-9069-y
RESEARCH PAPER
Thais Piassa Rogatko
Published online: 14 August 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine whether engaging in ow promoting activities would lead to increased positive affect (PA). Participants in this study consisted of 57 undergraduate university students who participated in order to receive extra credit in a psychology class. The randomly assigned high ow induction group performed a ow activity for 1 h, and lled out the PANAS and Flow State Scale 2 before and after the activity. The low ow induction group performed a low ow activity for the same amount of time and lled out both questionnaires as well. Findings indicated that participants in the high ow condition reported higher increases in PA and ow than those in the low ow condition, and that change in ow mediated the relationship between group and change in PA.
Keywords Flow Optimal experience Positive affect Negative affect
Mediation PANAS Flow State Scale II
1 Introduction
Flow is a state in which people become completely immersed in an activity and their level of skill matches the challenge at hand (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). It can be experienced while engaging in very diverse activities such as mountain climbing, meditation, playing chess, or creating art. The state of ow is important to study because it may be linked to positive emotions, the development of skills, improved performance, and achieving a meaningful life (Asakawa 2004; Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Learning more about ow, how to achieve it, and what its effects are may lead to increasing peoples levels of positive affect (PA).
T. P. Rogatko (&)
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA e-mail: [email protected]
The Inuence of Flow on Positive Affect in College Students
123
134 T. P. Rogatko
Csikszentmihalyi began his pioneering research on ow while conducting his dissertation focused on artists. After collecting descriptive data by interviewing hundreds of people, Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow- the Psychology of Optimal Experience, in 1990. In it, he delineated nine characteristics of ow: a balance between skills and challenges, clear goals, immediate feedback, autotelic experience (i.e. intrinsically rewarding), concentration, merging of action and awareness, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and feeling in control.
One of the critical...