PSYC1005 Chap.2 Engagement and Flow
Engagement and Flow
Engagement is the E in PERMA. This chapter defines intrinsic motivation and flow, lists the seven marks of flow, and shows why flow depends on matching challenge to skill, with boredom on one side and overload on the other.
It reviews evidence linking flow to wellbeing and performance, the school curriculum and online intervention studies that tried to strengthen engagement, and the conditions that make flow likely at work, in sport and in teams. It ends with the critique: dark flow, exercise dependence and the role of context, and the weekly exercise of recalling moments of full focus.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Intrinsic motivation and eudaimonic pursuits
- 02
Seven marks of flow
- 03
The challenge-skill channel
- 04
Flow, wellbeing and performance
- 05
Engagement interventions
- 06
Dark flow and exercise dependence
- 07
Collective flow
Worked example · free
Locating tasks on the challenge-skill map
- 1The easy quizzes have skill well above challenge, so they fall below the flow channel, in boredom.
- 1The new unit has challenge well above skill, so it falls above the channel, in overload.
- 1The coding project matches challenge to skill, inside the channel, so it is the likely source of flow, especially with clear goals and feedback.
Key terms
- Intrinsic motivation
- A built-in drive to look for new things and challenges and to do activities because they are satisfying in themselves.
- Dark flow
- Flow so enjoyable that people pursue the activity even at great personal cost.
- Exercise dependence
- A pattern marked by tolerance, withdrawal, loss of control and continuing to exercise despite injury.
- Collective flow
- Optimal experience shared during group activity, described as especially intense and enjoyable.
Engagement and Flow FAQ
What are the conditions for flow?
The lecture lists high autonomy, clear goals, a clear role and a sense of control, with immediate feedback and freedom from worry about failure in work and sport, and a collective orientation in teams. Above all, the challenge of the task has to match the person’s skill, because too easy a task leads to boredom and too hard a task to overload.
Does flow make people happier?
Flow goes with better performance, more happiness, greater job satisfaction and higher wellbeing, and with more energy afterwards. Csikszentmihalyi adds a subtlety: in the moment people may not feel happy, being too absorbed to reflect, but afterwards they report having felt as good as it is possible to feel.
Can engagement be harmful?
Yes. The lecture describes dark flow, in which an activity is so enjoyable that people continue at great cost, using a study of big wave surfers who called their need to surf an addiction. Exercise dependence is described by seven criteria, including tolerance, withdrawal and continuing despite injury, and context such as online design also matters.
What did the engagement intervention involve?
In Gander and colleagues’ online trial, participants spent a week recalling, each evening, three experiences in which their attention was particularly focused and they were unaware of their surroundings, and wrote down how they felt. Like the other conditions it raised happiness compared with a placebo exercise, but its effect on depressive symptoms was only marginal.
What is collective flow?
Collective flow is optimal experience shared during group activity. Zumeta and colleagues argue such experiences are especially intense and enjoyable when performed with others, and that collective activities can raise engagement, wellbeing and performance together, linking flow to the social side of wellbeing and to the importance of belonging and acceptance.
How was flow first measured?
Flow was measured by sampling people’s experiences at random moments in their daily lives, an approach associated with Massimini and Carli, rather than only by asking people afterwards. The lecture also treats individual differences as important, since people vary in how readily they enter flow and in whether it tends to arise in social activities.
Exam move
Learn the seven marks of flow as a list and the challenge-skill map as a picture, then classify a few everyday tasks of your own. For the evidence, remember one design per study: a school curriculum with two years of follow-up and an online placebo-controlled trial. Finish by writing two sentences on dark flow, because the exam can offer an option that treats more flow as always better.
Then write the engagement trial’s mixed result in one line, strong for happiness and marginal for depression, so an option that overstates it stands out.
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