CHAPTER 15
Katherine Vrooman, Kelsey Procter Finley, Jeanne Nakamura, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Abstract
The authors’ review of relevant literature revealed the following: (1) flow, an optimal experience, can occur during participation in the arts and humanities; (2) flow is a vehicle to flourishing; and (3) the arts and humanities are abundant sources of wisdom that can aid in the understanding of oneself and the world. These points together suggest that flow experiences in the arts and humanities offer a special opportunity for growth, and the authors conclude this chapter by proposing three avenues for this development: (1) because flow is an intrinsically rewarding experience, the experience itself encourages people to engage with the benefits of the arts and humanities; (2) flow breaks down the barrier between conscious and subconscious thought to facilitate creative and contemplative pursuits; and (3) recurring flow experiences in the arts and humanities lead to the cyclical development of challenge and skill, cultivating mastery and wisdom.
Key Words: flow, well-being, arts and humanities, psychological complexity, human development, psychological engagement, attention, optimal experience, growth, wisdom
In this chapter, we examine the ways in which the experience of flow can serve as a pathway for the arts and humanities to create and support flourishing. To do this, we take a broad view of human flourishing, one that includes components of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and the cultivation of psychological complexity. Although the term complexity has been used in a multitude of ways, here we refer to the process whereby individual potential is developed through ongoing differentiation and integration, where one rejects or selects environmental inputs for assimilation into one’s understanding of oneself and the world. It can be characterized as having the flexibility to hold differentiation and integration in balance without overdoing either. This process of individual complexification underlies the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of human complexity on the larger scale because it leads to higher and higher levels of adaptation to the human environment. For a more complete treatment of this concept, see Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2006). We will begin by describing the experience of flow, its conditions, and the qualities characteristic of the experience. We then turn to a review of literature relevant to flow in the context of the arts and humanities, and flow in connection with flourishing outcomes in domains other than the arts and humanities. Finally, we consider how flow can act as a catalyst for producing flourishing outcomes within the arts and humanities.
Flow in the Arts and Humanities
Flow, often described as “an optimal experience,” is a state of complete absorption and engagement in an activity, which is enjoyed both in the moment and in retrospect (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Flow can occur and has been observed in activities including, but not limited to, athletics, work activities, scientific discovery, and the arts. Observing artists engaged in their craft served as one of the foundations for the conceptualization of the flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Simply participating in the arts and humanities is not equivalent to experiencing flow. Additionally, we are not aware of any empirical evidence thus far that demonstrates that people experience more flow when engaged in the arts and humanities than in other activities; however, flow in the context of the arts and humanities may provide a special opportunity for flourishing. Since the seminal theory of flow was published (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990), the flow experience has been observed and studied in a multitude of creative disciplines in the arts and humanities, and is incorporated into Tay, Pawelski, and Keith’s (2018) conceptualization of the immersion mechanism, one of the ways in which the arts and humanities can lead to flourishing. Additionally, there is evidence that flow can be experienced not only in the creation or performance, but also in the experiencing or appreciation, of the arts and humanities. The conditions for flow to occur in an activity are a relative balance of challenge and skill, clear goals, and immediate feedback. Flow experiences are often described by qualities such as a feeling of oneness with the activity, becoming unaware of one’s surroundings, losing track of time, and feeling that the activity is worth doing for its own sake. In the following sections, we will review themes in the existing literature on flow (an optimal experience) in (1) the creation and performance, and (2) experiencing and appreciation, across disciplines in the arts and humanities.
Creating and Performing
The flow experience has been studied in musicians (e.g., Wrigley & Emmerson, 2013), artists (e.g., Banfield & Burgess, 2013), dancers (e.g., Hefferon & Ollis, 2006), actors (e.g., Martin & Cutler, 2002), and writers (e.g., Perry, 1999). Research on experiencing flow in the creation or performance of the arts and humanities has found evidence for many of the same qualities as flow in other activities such as sports or scientific creativity. For example, intrinsic motivation has been closely tied to the experience of flow in the arts and humanities in qualitative interview studies of musicians and dancers (Bloom & Skutnick-Henley, 2005; Hefferon & Ollis, 2006), as well as a quantitative study of theater students (Martin & Cutler, 2002). While no single component of flow can guarantee a flow experience, the challenge-skill balance seems to have especially important implications for well-being outcomes in the arts and humanities (Fritz & Avsec, 2007; Habe, Biasutti, & Kajtna, 2019), perhaps because of its importance for growth and increasing complexity.
While flow may have many of the same qualities in the creation and performance of the arts and humanities as in other activities, the best opportunities for flow seem to vary by domain. First, flow seems to be more readily attainable in domains where the creator is focused on the process, rather than on the product. Banfield and Burgess (2013) found that textile artists and painters (2D artists) experienced more immersion than glass, ceramic, and wood artists (3D artists) in the creation of their artistic product. The authors suggest this could be due to 2D artists exploring and designing as part of the formal creation of their artistic product, while 3D artists must do most of their exploring and designing prior to the formal creation of the artistic product. In performance art, flow seems to be less achievable when performance anxiety is present, which is in line with flow theory, since anxiety occurs when there is an imbalance of challenge and skill. Many of the musicians interviewed in Bloom and Skutnick-Henley (2005) described more flow experiences in non-performance settings, such as rehearsal or personal practice. Thomson and Jaque (2012) found that overall levels of anxiety were not related to flow in dancers, but dancers with clinical levels of anxiety had fewer flow experiences. While the piece of work may be an appropriate challenge for a flow experience in a non-performance setting, the added challenge of performing in front of an audience, with very little to no mistakes, may bring a person out of flow and into performance anxiety. While performance settings may have some of the components of a flow experience, like clear goals and unambiguous feedback (Wrigley & Emmerson, 2013), a performer must have enough self-confidence to combat feelings of anxiety (Hefferon & Ollis, 2006), as anxiety may inhibit the loss of self-consciousness and the merging of action and awareness that are important qualities for flow to occur. Confidence may come with experience and increased skill. O’Neill (1999) found that high-achieving music students practiced more and experienced more flow than average-achieving music students. However, it seems less clear that flow experiences enhance the quality of the product in the arts and humanities. In writing, Larson (1988) proposes that the flow experience or an experience of boredom or anxiety will be reflected in the quality of the writing, saying that “the quality of the performance will depend, to a large extent, on how well the thinker is able to arrange his or her thought processes so as to make them enjoyable” (p. 171). On the other hand, Marin and Bhattacharya (2013) found that flow was not predictive of piano achievement, and Gaggioli, Chirico, Mazzoni, Milani, and Riva (2017) found that flow scores only predicted self-reported performance, but not expert evaluated performances in musicians.
Creating or performing together, a common practice in many of the arts and humanities, may provide a special opportunity for flow. Fritz and Avsec (2007) suggested that the combined effort in a group to produce a single product may be one of the best opportunities for flow because of “responsibility dispersion.” Responsibility dispersion might explain why an orchestral performance or a full cast scene can be less anxiety producing and more flow inducing than a solo performance or a monologue. Research on the existing connections between group members and communication and connections made during the group flow experience is compelling and has important implications. An individual’s flow experience within a group may be influenced by the other group members, and perhaps especially through the leader of the group (Bakker, 2005). Bakker (2005) suggested that this happens through a process similar to emotional contagion. Gaggioli et al. (2017) found that individual musicians felt more intrinsically motivated when they had stronger emotional connections with their band. Lucas (2018) suggested that social flow may help maintain and build trust and relationship quality. The relationship between emotional connection and optimal experiences in groups are likely cyclical, with flow helping to build connection and with connected groups more easily experiencing flow.
Experiencing or Appreciating
Through interviews with museum professionals, Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson (1990) described the elements of an intense experience with art. In these interviews, many of the museum professionals described a flow-like state that occurred when they viewed art. About two centuries prior, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Madam de Tott, “It fixed me like a statue a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, I do not know which, for I lost all ideas of time, even the consciousness of my existence” (Jefferson, 2018, p. 187). Jefferson, here, is sharing a flow experience that he had when viewing the painting Marius at Minturnae by Jean-Germain Drouais. Flow in experiencing or appreciating the arts and humanities has been measured quantitatively in the domain of visual arts (Wanzer, Finley, Zarian, & Cortez, 2018) and in the reading of literature (Thissen, Menninghaus, & Schlotz, 2018). The body of available literature regarding the experience of flow in appreciation of the arts and humanities is relatively small. Here we are not referring to the potential use of the arts or humanities to enhance experiences of flow in other activities, such as listening to music to increase flow experiences while engaged in athletics (e.g., Pates, Karageorghis, Fryer, & Maynard, 2003). Instead, we are specifically referring to the experience of flow when the primary focus of the individual is appreciating the arts and humanities. Research thus far on flow in appreciating the arts and humanities has focused on the correlates and predictors of the flow experience. For example, Diaz (2013) found that a mindfulness intervention significantly improved flow in a music listening experience. McQuillan and Conde (1996) found that autonomy in book choice was predictive of flow in reading experiences. In viewing a theatre performance, Meeks, Shryock, and Vanderbroucke (2018) found that flow (part of a larger latent variable in their study) helped to predict multiple well-being variables as well as theatre experience satisfaction, and Aykol, Aksatan, and İpek (2017) found that the perceived authenticity of the theatrical performance may often be a prerequisite for theater absorption and flow experience.
Researchers studying flow in the appreciation of the arts and humanities seem to have leaped into measuring the flow experience in this context using existing flow measures designed for other purposes to investigate potential correlates or predictors of the experience. While interesting, it is important, first, to fully understand the phenomenology of this kind of flow experience. While some flow conditions and elements of the experience can be easily transferred to the appreciation and experience of the arts and humanities (e.g., intrinsic motivation and time distortion), others seem to be qualitatively different. What is the challenge? What skills are necessary to meet that challenge? What is the ultimate goal of an experience with the arts? When an individual has “an experience,” as described by John Dewey (1934), with the arts and humanities, we propose that the challenge, the skill of the individual, and the goal may include what follows.
The challenge when having an experience with the arts and humanities may be to first understand the work. What is it? What is the creator trying to communicate? And what does it all mean? The skills required to face that challenge are a familiarity with the arts and humanities medium, and a tolerance for ambiguity (for a review of this concept, see Furnham & Ribchester, 1995). Familiarity with the medium may allow an individual to better understand the work of art, whereas someone with the skill of tolerance for ambiguity might be more likely to persevere in the process of understanding if the work does not make sense at first. Once the individual has an understanding of the work, the next challenge is making associations and connections between the work and their general understanding of themselves and their world. What does this mean to me in the context of my life and my beliefs about the world? The skills required to face this challenge may be knowledge of oneself and one’s beliefs and facility for introspection. Finally, the goal in experiencing the arts and humanities may be an incorporation of what is learned through the associations and connections made into the self, which may lead to transformed perspectives and an enhancement of individual capability—which is to say, a complexification of the individual.
From Flow to Flourishing
This chapter’s ultimate concern is examining flow in the arts and humanities as a pathway to flourishing. In the absence of extensive empirical work involving all three elements, we look to flow research in other contexts to provide a place from which to extrapolate as we consider the ways in which flow may be working to produce flourishing outcomes within the domain of the arts and humanities. This section will first consider the flow state, in and of itself, as a contributor to flourishing. We then discuss flow in the context of important life domains and the flourishing that results through domain-specific mastery.
Llorens and Salanova (2017) provide a comprehensive review of the outcomes of experiencing flow at work. Across the studies they reviewed, they found evidence of a direct and positive impact of flow on subjective well-being, positive emotions, positive mood, active coping and commitment, task engagement, job satisfaction, energy level, as well as reduced exhaustion, cynicism, anxiety, and burnout. Another diary-based study by Demerouti, Bakker, Sonnentag, and Fullagar (2012) examined the relationship between three dimensions of flow at work (absorption, intrinsic motivation, and enjoyment) and found that flow at work, particularly the enjoyment dimension, was positively related to vigor and negatively related to exhaustion, both at the end of the workday as well as at the end of the evening.
Several researchers in this area have presented sound arguments that experiencing flow may contribute to flourishing by way of increasing overall levels of positive affect (Demerouti et al., 2012; Moneta, 2004). In line with both the hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), they suggest the theory of “broaden and build” (Fredrickson, 1998) to account for momentary and long-term benefits resulting from flow experience. According to broaden and build, positive emotions cause a broadening of one’s awareness, an openness to the environment, and novel ways of thinking. This provides a momentary hedonic benefit and at the same time creates an upward spiral of emotional well-being over time that results in the development of valuable skills and resources.
In addition to the upward spiral of emotional well-being, the flow experience produces flourishing outcomes in another important way; the experience itself is one of self-organization and growth. The deep concentration and well-ordered consciousness characteristic of flow helps the self to develop through a process of differentiation and integration. Differentiation refers to increased uniqueness, a separation of one’s self from others. Integration refers to a merging of the self with other people, ideas, or entities. During a flow experience, one has the internal coherence to organize these elements within the self. Proper distance can be gained between the self and views, opinions, and ways of thinking and being that one is not willing to make part of oneself. Conversely, a deep merging of entities beyond the self with one’s own ways of being, knowing, feeling, and understanding can take place. After a flow experience, through the processes of differentiation and integration, the self becomes more complex.
Although the experience of flow in and of itself contributes directly to flourishing in important ways, it is most powerful in facilitating flourishing outcomes when it occurs within a content domain that is meaningful to the person. The repetition of flow experience in a meaningful domain, motivated by the intrinsically rewarding state inherent to flow, will ultimately result in skill development and competency in a domain of life important to the person, a defining feature of flourishing. Evidence of this process was demonstrated in a longitudinal study by Salanova, Bakker, and Llorens (2006), which looked at workplace flow among teachers, and found that experiencing flow at work at time one was associated with increased work-related self-efficacy at time two. The construct of vital engagement (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003) encapsulates the two elements; it adds meaning to the concept of flow and is defined as a relationship to the world characterized both by enjoyed absorption and subjective significance.
Because the state of flow is intrinsically rewarding, it encourages people to return to the domain in which it was experienced. Since flow also requires a match between challenge and skill, skill may increase over time as practice is carried out in the domain in which the practice is performed. Through deliberate striving in a domain that is meaningful or important to the person, he or she will gain skill and competence in a domain important to his or her life by seeking and repeating flow experiences. We can understand mastery gained in a subjectively meaningful domain as the development of domain-specific complexity.
From Creating and Appreciating to Flourishing
Art and humanities making and appreciating have the potential to promote flourishing in myriad ways. Tay, Pawelski, and Keith (2018) produced an excellent review of literature in this arena. Instead of conducting an exhaustive review here, we highlight a few unique features of the arts and humanities that are potentially valuable to human flourishing, and discuss how these elements may benefit those who engage with them in ways that would support flourishing. First, we consider the question, “Which aspects of the arts and humanities are especially valuable to flourishing?” Aristotle believed that art communicates information about essential human life, morality, virtue; and that it offers the opportunity to think about thought itself. He also believed that art is “imitation” (a rendering of the unrealized ideal that comes to life, not merely a representation or historical account) of mental, emotional, and spiritual human life. Butcher (1951) summarizes Aristotle’s conceptualization of art with the following words: “The common original, then, from which all the arts draw is human life—its mental processes, its spiritual movements, its outward acts issuing from deeper sources; in a word, all that constitutes the inward and essential activity of the soul” (p. 124).
If this conceptualization is accurate, the arts and humanities are a rich trove of human and cultural wisdom and would indeed contain the content necessary to support individual human development, as well as the development of our species, on profound levels. This is indeed what the findings of studies reviewed by Tay et al. (2018) seem to suggest. They report benefits from engagement with the arts and humanities in the forms of perspective taking, the construction of meaning, and creativity.
The arts and humanities may also offer the opportunity to think using an unfamiliar structure, to transform or reorganize one’s own thinking; by applying the structure displayed in the artistic work to issues in one’s own mind, the very structures of thought can be questioned, challenged, and reorganized, or at least understood to be one of many possible structures of thought, even if they are not in fact changed. Additionally, engagement with the arts and humanities may provide the opportunity to question and shift one’s ontological understanding of one’s self, and one’s moral and ethical responsibilities (Bendor, Maggs, Peake, Robinson, & Williams, 2017).
The study by Bendor et al. (2017) provides an elegant and concrete demonstration of this process in action. By interacting with a multimedia art installation, participants in the study were immersed in a set of different “possible futures” based on different sustainability-related worldviews. The researchers’ goal was to create an experience that would stand up to artistic standards, one that could be appreciated for both its content and its form, and one that makes explicit the relationship between the ontological, or the way we understand the world, and the ethical, the way we believe we should act in the world. The installation was designed to engage participants “not through an infocentric prism but from the perspective of aesthetics and experience” (Bendor et al., 2017, p. 7). It was not intended to teach participants something new about sustainability or to persuade them that one view of sustainability was preferable to another; instead, it aimed to destabilize any singular meaning of sustainability by encouraging deeper awareness of the relationship between different conceptualizations of sustainability and different worldviews. In post-experience group discussions, a number of participants were willing to critically reconsider their understanding of sustainability and even to acknowledge that other meanings of sustainability were equally valuable. Some participants reported that they had indeed changed their mind, and some even insisted that they had not changed their views while explicitly expressing a view different from the one they had previously endorsed. Although flow was not explicitly measured or mentioned by the authors, they discuss the challenges of designing an experience “at the right scale as to inspire a sense of freedom and agency while avoiding creating too much anxiety, bafflement, or boredom” (Bendor et al., 2017, p. 8). This language is identical to that used to describe flow. If the researchers were as successful in designing to these criteria as they were in designing an enjoyable and moving experience, it is reasonable to consider that a flow experience may have contributed to the complexification and growth that participants demonstrated in response to their interaction with the installation. This process described by Bendor et al. (2017) underlies most learning processes and leads to the shaping of a more complex self.
Another aspect of flourishing that the arts and humanities may be uniquely suited to enrich is creativity. In his three-phase model of creativity, Feldman (1994) describes three essential aspects of creativity. The first is the natural tendency of the mind to take liberties with what is real in mostly subconscious ways, although with the possibility of being or becoming conscious. The second phase is something he calls the transformational imperative; it is what he sees as an innate and fundamental human need to change our external world to make it conform to our wishes, to create, to contribute. The third and final phase is that of “the crafted world,” or the world of artifacts of creative work that are available as a source of information and inspiration to those who also wish to change the world.
The richness of important human content in Feldman’s crafted world provides a space for the expression of life themes and exposure to the life themes of others. (in the case of appreciating), or the expression and sharing of and reflection/processing/development and feedback on one’s own life. Creators can share and receive feedback on their own life themes by contributing to the body of work comprising the crafted world. Appreciators of the crafted world can apply new understandings gained to any area of life. Furthermore, as creators appreciate the work of others, their reflections can inform their future contributions. This communication process serves to develop individual complexity but also creates a sociocultural dialectic where individuals share and exchange important human information—supporting individual and societal-level integration and differentiation. On this basis, this exchange has the potential to allow us to see and understand each other more deeply. This level of understanding, if embraced, has the power to humanize the alienated, and to inspire tolerance, compassion, and self-transcendence.
Though the bounty offered by the arts and humanities is rich, that does not mean that people will necessarily take advantage of the opportunity; or, even if they would like to, that they would necessarily have the requisite skill to gain the benefits described. In the next section, we explore potential ways that flow during art and humanities making and appreciation may facilitate flourishing.
Flow, the Arts and Humanities, and Flourishing
To conclude, we present a theoretical reflection on three modes by which the state and conditions of flow in the context of the arts and humanities may act as a catalyst for increased flourishing, as well as to suggest some possible directions for future research. The three modes are (1) taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the arts and humanities, (2) breaking down barriers, and (3) developing assets to support flourishing over time.
The first way we believe flow may be working as a catalyst for the arts and humanities to produce flourishing outcomes is that it motivates people to become actively involved in the opportunities offered by the arts and humanities (Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi & Delle Fave, 1988). As mentioned earlier, the intrinsic rewards provided by the flow state motivate those who experience it to repeat similar behavior in the future. If one experiences flow during arts and humanities appreciation or creation, one will likely be motivated to return to a similar activity again and again in the future, making it more likely that one will benefit from the opportunities offered. Likewise, attention is required to gain benefits from interaction with the arts and humanities; simply showing up is not enough. Attention is an essential feature of the flow state, which means that if returning to the state of flow is a motivating factor in arts and humanities participation, one has to devote one’s focused attention. This also makes benefiting from the opportunities offered much more likely.
The second mode by which flow may be acting as a catalyst between the arts and humanities and flourishing is by breaking down the barrier between conscious and subconscious thought. The language of the arts and humanities is often the language of symbol, metaphor—the language of the subconscious mind. The state of flow draws conscious and subconscious thought closer together (similar to meditation) and facilitates communication between the two through present-focused attention and loss of reflective self-consciousness. Conscious thought, thereby, is allowed to direct subconscious thought with goals and objectives so that it can create and offer novel solutions/possibilities by drawing connections between loosely connected or uncommonly combined elements, which it does naturally, unlike the conscious mind. This combination allows for the strengths of both conscious and subconscious thought to be used at the same time in creatively productive or contemplative pursuits (Feldman, 1994; Perry, 1999).
The final catalyzing action we would like to propose is that flow encourages the development of assets that support flourishing over time. In flow, the skill level of the person experiencing it must meet the challenge of the task at hand. In the case of creation or appreciation of the arts and humanities, the task is either to create and offer something novel and meaningful, or to understand what is being presented and to integrate it into one’s own perspective, or (in the case of a discordant aesthetic experience) to differentiate one’s perspective from it—all of which enrich one’s complexity by transforming one’s perspective, and reorganizing the structure of one’s thought. Persistence in these tasks would mean continuously developing one’s skill, seeking out new challenges to meet the new skill level, and again developing additional skill to meet the new challenge. Over time, this type of engagement would amount to becoming an expert or developing mastery in the domain. Though we are not aware of any empirical evidence to directly support this, it would stand to reason that if one repeats this process over the course of a lifetime, substantial growth and wisdom could be gained.
Flow experienced in creating and appreciating the arts and humanities is worth experiencing in and of itself. Furthermore, the perspective and complexity one gains through flow in the arts and humanities is not limited to the world of the arts and humanities, but can then be transferred and applied to situations and decisions in everyday life. Well-ordered consciousness and deep concentration allow for important and potentially enriching content to be integrated into the self, or into a deep working through of one’s own life themes, one’s worldviews, and the development of mastery.
Questions for Future Research
This chapter has proposed processes and outcomes that require empirical assessment. Initial questions that might guide research include:
1.Do flow experiences in the arts and humanities lead to increased complexity, and if so, how? We propose testing whether flow experiences lead to perspective change via pluralizing meanings and/or increasing valuing of different perspectives.
2.Beyond the technical challenge, what other challenges (e.g., existential problems) are involved in the creation or performance of the arts and humanities?
3.In experiencing or appreciating the arts and humanities, to what extent is the challenge to understand the work? In what respects is it to understand the self?
4.Likewise, in experiencing or appreciating the arts and humanities, to what extent do the skills involve experience with the artistic medium and its history? To what extent do the skills involve a tolerance for ambiguity or an ability to introspect?
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