Flow
Is Flow just remarketing older traditions?
The following paragraphs give you an overview of the psychological concepts that can be seen as relevant to the Flow concept. We ask: Could Flow just be motivation, focus of attention, optimal arousal, a stream of positive reinforcement or a westernized way of describing a state reached through Buddhist meditation? Before these questions are answered the first section gives a brief description about what Flow is.
Is Flow positive reinforcement?
Flow was introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (M.C.) in the 60s. M.C.observed painters and sculptors being fully immersed into their art making without any extrinsic rewards, i.e. they were neither getting recognized or paid. At that time such immersion was explained by the term "sublimation" which was a culturally acceptable form of expressing unacceptable impulses1. M.C, however, was not convinced by this explanation and thought the artists experienced to much joy for it to be an expression of some undefined need. M.C. started interviewing artists that experienced full immersion. During the interviews he identified a state of mind he named flow. Flow could be felt during an engaging conversation, reading a fascinating novel, simply being at work, or performing some other pleasant habitual activity such as browsing the Internet.Six factors encompass the experience of Flow, all should be experienced at the same time. (1.) Intense and focused concentration on the present moment. (2). Merging of action and awareness.(3). A loss of reflective self-consciousness.(4). A sense of personal control over the situation (5.) A distortion of temporal experiences. (6.) Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding.
Intrinsic motivation partially explains Flow, which is a concept developed by Maslow (1968). The concept identified that people do not necessarily work for external rewards, but find the work alone very rewarding. Maslow argued that humans have an intrinsic motivation of self-actualization. This motivation causes people to challenge their potentialities and seek their motivations by seeking out various experiences and activities which often end up being enjoyable (Stacks 1991). Maslow indeed identified the conditions necessary for a human to reach self-actualization and enjoyment of intrinsic reward, stating that one can not be hungry and must be secure. Nevertheless Maslow did not make it clear how this reward felt (M.C, 1988). Intrinsic motivation was also investigated before M.C by Richard deCharms who found that schoolchildren who felt intrinsic motivation towards schoolwork enjoyed it more than students who were motivated by external rewards.
While investigation of intrinsic motivation offer some explanation of flow most of the studies were conducted in an experimental laboratory focusing on human behavior. They did not question the subjective experience during such a behavior, as MC has done by investigating a natural occurring context.
From description of flow it is clear that the person in flow is deeply engaged and concentrated. Concentration is connected with attention, as well as it is connected with intrinsic motivation. So could Flow just describe the focus of our attention on one specific task? When explaining flow, M.C. refers to the fact that our attention or cognitive capacity constantly makes tradeoffs about what we should focus on. This is because our cognitive resources for attention are limited. All our cognitive resources are focused on one specific idea during Flow. This eliminates conflict and competition of thoughts. Thus, we loose track of time and do not enter other thoughts that usually preoccupy our minds and decrease our well being. William James described already in 1890 the desirable state of focused attention "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state (...).
However from thereon researchers focused investigations of attention as a cognitive process of selective concentration in the context of education and cognitive neuroscience.
It seems that M.C. was the first to point specifically to the joyful aspect of focusing ones attention. Not asking how, why and when but how it feels as a phenomenon from the psychological perspective.
The Yerkes-Dodson law presents the relationship between arousal and performance. The law that was established in 1908, states that moderate physiological and mental arousal lead to optimal performance. Arousal beyond the optimal point however leads to stress, and arousal beneath the optimal point lead to boredom. Both boredom and stress demolish performance levels ( Yerkes 1908) . It can be postulated that feeling flow is experiencing optimal arousal. These two concepts are likely interrelated and explain the positive aspect of Flow. We argue however that M.C. does not remarket this very old law, despite the obvious parallel. M.C. applied the relationship between boredom and stress however proposes a reasonable cause to it as well. To maintain Flow, M.C. argues that one must experience a balance between perceived challenge and own ability or capacity to deal with the challenge. If challenge is too great we experience anxiety, if the skill is too great, relative to the challenge we experience boredom.
M.C. does not remarket the finding of optimal arousal but by presenting Flow ads some insight in the empirical relationship of the Yerkes-Dodson law.
Is Flow a stream of positive reinforcement?
Some researchers investigating the application of flow onto an education setting identify that flow theory contains principles also used when designing instructions from a behaviorist perspective (Schneider, 2001). Optimal level of difficulty and receiving fast feedback to keep flow going has parallels with positive reinforcement where behavior is followed by a reward which further leads to increasing the frequency of that behavior. Although Flow has been mainly argued to be about intrinsic reward, the moment it is applied to the psychology of work or psychology of learning it is difficult to distinguish whether flow achieved, is based on intrinsic or extrinsic motivational factors. For example: A surgeon might experience Flow during an operation he performs on average once a week. It is hard to establish whether Flow is due to a deep enthusiasm for the task or due to money, fame or patients improved health. The latter are reactions caused by the operation, which might have taken the role as a reinforcement for these positive consequences.
Although Behaviorist ideas can be identified in Flow and M.C. descriptions of Flow, it can be argued, if so, that he was the first to give an account of conceptualizing the experience of potential constant positive reinforcement.
Flow is focusing ones attention. Focused attention is the essence of meditation and religious practice. The focus of Flow is argued by M.C to fully absorb ones attention leading to a feeling of loss of self and becoming at one and thereby finding a meaning. "Zen" in mandarin means " full absorption" and emphasizes the attainment of enlightenment and direct insight reached by medition . Meditation has the goal to calm the monkey mind, which is a metaphor for the diffuse attention we experience in everyday life, i.e thinking about many things at once (Nakamura & M.C, 2009). When M.C. investigated the flow experience, which is a state he describes as effortless concentration, studies confirmed that people from various cultures reported to experience a flow during meditative and religious practice. This lead M.C. to conclude that flow is a universal human trait, where our brain finds the experiences of complete involvement and intense concentration as a highly rewarding and evolutionary beneficial state (Nakamura & M.C, 2009).
Due to the existence and extensive descriptions of a state similar to flow deriving from Buddhism and Taoism, M.C. was not the first to conceptualize flow. However it can be argued that he was the first in attempting to define the state of mind from a western and psychological perspective. Today M.C. identifies Zen Buddhism and Mindfulness as a direct path to reach effortless attention,i.e. flow. Nevertheless he emphasizes an indirect path to reach flow also. People who love their job which absorbs them deeply and they find interesting will cause flow without the effort that meditation requires.
With the emphasis of the indirect path, M.C adds a novel contribution to the presence of "flow" as described by Zen.
Although the parallels between Zen and Flow are remarkable, it is argued that M.C. has not rebranded Zen, but identified its omnipresence as a human trait and formulated the concept as it is experienced by the western world.
Flow has been critiqued for being a western concept which is too goal directed to establish a panhuman trait. Further some argue it is too mystical and is not appropriate to study within the social sciences (M.C, 1988). Also, M.C has well explained how flow feels but not so much how it can be achieved.
These critiques might be worthy of consideration however from the five sections above we conclude that
....flow is not an area of positive psychology that is simply remarketing elder traditions. Flow is indeed identifiable in theories like arousal, Zen and attention and can be used to give these theories a more complete explanation. Overall, Flow is however a novel an important concept that has enabled beneficial application to positive psychology.
Interview with Csikszentmihalyi
History and Critical evaluation of Flow
References:
1. Csikszentmihalyi, I. and Csikszentmihalyi M. (1988). Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2. Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow theory and research. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 195-206). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Maslow A. (1968). Toward a psychology of being. New York: Van Nostrand.
4.Stacks D., Hill, S. R., & Hickson M. (1991). Introduction to communication theory. Fort W orth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
5. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt, Vol. 1, pp. 403-404.
6. Yerkes RM, Dodson JD (1908). "The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation". Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 18: 459–482.
7. Schneider, Daniel (2003) , Conception and implementation of rich pedagogical scenarios through collaborative portal sites, Working paper, "Future of Learning" Workshop, Sevilla 2003 ( http://tecfa.unige.ch/guides/emacs/icool04-schneider-prerelease.pdf)
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