What constitutes enjoyment of life? Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness offers a comprehensive survey of theoretical and empirical investigations of the "flow" experience, a desirable or optimal state of consciousness that enhances a person's psychic state. "Flow" can be said to occur when people are able to meet the challenges of their environment with appropriate skills, and accordingly feel a sense of well-being, a sense of mastery, and a heightened sense of self-esteem. The authors show the diverse (...) contexts and circumstances in which flow is reported in different cultures (e.g. Japan, Korea, Australia, Italy), and describe its positive emotional impacts. They reflect on the concept of flow vis-à-vis modern social structures, historical phenomena, and evolutionary biocultural selection. The ways in which the ability to experience flow affects work satisfaction, academic success, and the overall quality of life are suggested; and the childrearing practices that result in the ability to derive enjoyment from life, considered. (shrink)

The turn to descriptive studies of ethics is inspired by the sense that our ethical theorizing needs to engage ethnography, history, and literature in order to address the full complexity of ethical life. This article examines four books that describe the cultivation of virtue in diverse cultural contexts, two concerning early China and two concerning Islam in recent years. All four emphasize the significance of embodiment, and they attend to the complex ways in which choice and agency interact with the (...) authority of tradition. In considering these books, this article examines the relations between our academic claims concerning the self and ethics, conceptual or theoretical claims made in the elite writings of traditions, and the lived experiences of the people we study. The conclusion turns to our methodological foundations for studying these topics both comparatively and constructively. (shrink)

The turn to descriptive studies of ethics is inspired by the sense that our ethical theorizing needs to engage ethnography, history, and literature in order to address the full complexity of ethical life. This article examines four books that describe the cultivation of virtue in diverse cultural contexts, two concerning early China and two concerning Islam in recent years. All four emphasize the significance of embodiment, and they attend to the complex ways in which choice and agency interact with the (...) authority of tradition. In considering these books, this article examines the relations between our academic claims concerning the self and ethics, conceptual or theoretical claims made in the elite writings of traditions, and the lived experiences of the people we study. The conclusion turns to our methodological foundations for studying these topics both comparatively and constructively. (shrink)

Leading scholars examine religious and philosophical dimensions of the Chinese classic known as the Daodejing or Laozi.

This chapter focuses on the use of effortless attention in performing daily activities and tasks. It details a study developed by The University of Chicago and Claremont Graduate University, and named the Experience Sampling Method to collect data from subjects of the study investigating the use of effortless attention in daily life. The findings are based on an ESM study of subjects consisting of middle and high school students from around the United States and the Sloan Study of Youth and (...) Social Development. The Sloan study focuses on investigating both effortful and effortless attention experiences of the subjects. A large number of students reveal how effortless attention has helped them to focus better on several tasks without much effort. (shrink)

What is the nature of the aesthetic experience? Is it the same for everyone? It is possible to facilitate its occurrence? This book focuses on the psychology of the aesthetic experience and on the perception and understanding of art, suggesting ways to raise levels of visual literacy and enhance artistic enjoyment. The findings will be of importance not only to museum professionals and art educators, but also to psychologists and those interested in the nature of the aesthetic experience.

While the formulation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, including the experience dimensions, has remained stable since its introduction in 1975, its dedicated measurement tools, research methodologies, and fields of application, have evolved considerably. Among these, education stands out as one of the most active. In recent years, researchers have examined flow in the context of other theoretical constructs such as motivation. The resulting work in the field of education has led to the development of a new model for understanding (...) flow experience in education, specifically dedicated to adult learning. As a result of both a meticulous analysis of existing models and consideration of more recent developments, a new flow scale has thus been developed. The aim of this study is therefore twofold: to validate the new flow measurement scale dedicated to the educational environment, EduFlow-2, and to test a new theoretical model. Students taking a course, some on-site and others in a MOOC, participated. Several scales were administered online at the end of the participants' course during the 2017 academic year. The factor structure of EduFlow-2 was tested using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling. Several models were tested. The model with a second-order factor best fit the data. We tested the invariance of the flow scale measure for gender and for the type of training. We were able to show that the flow scale is invariant of the modalities of these two variables. Results revealed good psychometric qualities for the scale, making it suitable for both on-site and distance learning. The analysis also revealed significant relationships with the classic variables of motivation, self-efficacy, learning climate, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, all four dimensions of the model were found to be adequate and consistent with the underlying theoretical arguments. In the end, this new, short flow scale and the theoretical model were demonstrated to be promising for future studies in the field of education. (shrink)

The Meaning of Things explores the meanings of household possessions for three generation families in the Chicago area, and the place of materialism in American culture. Now regarded as a keystone in material culture studies, Halton's first book is based on his dissertation and coauthored with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. First published by Cambridge University Press in 1981, it has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, and Hungarian. The Meaning of Things is a study of the significance of material possessions in contemporary (...) urban life, and of the ways people carve meaning out of their domestic environment. Drawing on a survey of eighty families in Chicago who were interviewed on the subject of their feelings about common household objects, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton provide a unique perspective on materialism, American culture, and the self. They begin by reviewing what social scientists and philosophers have said about the transactions between people and things. In the model of 'personhood' that the authors develop, goal-directed action and the cultivation of meaning through signs assume central importance. They then relate theoretical issues to the results of their survey. An important finding is the distinction between objects valued for action and those valued for contemplation. The authors compare families who have warm emotional attachments to their homes with those in which a common set of positive meanings is lacking, and interpret the different patterns of involvement. They then trace the cultivation of meaning in case studies of four families. Finally, the authors address what they describe as the current crisis of environmental and material exploitation, and suggest that human capacities for the creation and redirection of meaning offer the only hope for survival. A wide range of scholars - urban and family sociologists, clinical, developmental and environmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers, and many general readers - will find this book stimulating and compelling. Translations: Il significato degli oggetti. Italian translation. Rome: Edizione Kappa, 1986. Der Sinn der Dinge. German translation. Munich: Psychologie Verlags Union, 1989. Japanese translation 2007. Targyaink tukreben. Hungarian translation, 2011. (shrink)

Human action and experience are the outcome of genes and memes. Not only are both of these represented in consciousness, but consciousness mediates their claims and thus governs our choices. Hence it is important how consciousness is ordered and where it is directed. Sorokin's typology of the sensate and the ideational (“spiritual”), and the dialectic between them, is relevant to this issue. In our period of history, the sensate factors of materialism and secularism need to be dialectically counterbalanced by the (...) reinforcement of memes that value the spiritual intimations of the realm beyond the senses. As we approach the twenty‐first century, the memes that will undergird our spirituality will be those that resacralize nature and emphasize our unity as humans with all of universal reality, in an idea of common “beinghood.” Spiritual systems that accord with this trend in evolution will have to respect three conditions. They will (1) integrate the sensate and the ideational; (2) reflect the importance of the “flow” state of optimal experience, which matches ever‐complexifying skills with comparable challenges; and (3) move the fulcrum of their worldview from the human being to the network of beings and its evolution. (shrink)

Clear evidence of large individual differences in children's performance in talent areas can be explained either in terms of innate gifts (the “talent account”) or in terms of early exposure (the “no talent account” proposed by Howe et al.). At this point, there is no conclusive support for either account, and it is doubtful that talent could be explained exclusively by only one of them.

The demise of Cartesianism as an animating force in conceptualizing mind and body relations has opened up the field to a wider variety of perspectives, like the "embodiment" of phenomenological thinkers. However, because of Cartesianism's deeply rooted psychic legacy it still makes its presence felt in various places in everyday life. This paper will explore two facets of everyday life, sports and contemplation, which lend themselves to a mind‐body cognitive dissonance affected by latent Cartesian thinking. As an alternative, we will (...) propose a more phenomenologically oriented interpretation based on what has been revealed by historical precedents as well as our empirical investigations. Keywords: Flow, Contemplation, Phenomenofogy, Sports. (shrink)

. In order to survive as a species and grow in complexity, humanity must adopt a new image of what it means to be human, rediscover a reward system beyond the merely material, and see that young people find joy in challenges and in cooperating with others.

Suggests ways to raise levels of visual literacy and enhance artistic enjoyment.

Recent reports of the discovery of a “God module” in the human brain derive from the fact that epileptic seizures in the left temporal lobe are associated with ecstatic feelings sometimes described as an experience of the presence of God. The brain area involved has been described as either (a) the seat of an innate human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions.In fact, religious experience is extremely various and involves many parts of the brain, (...) including some that are prehuman in their evolutionary history and some that are characteristically human. In the continuing integration of such experiences, spiritual formation takes place. Thus the entire human brain might be described as a “God module.”Such a process is only possible because of the brain's complexity. The human brain is the most complex entity for its size that we know of. As used here, complexity is a specialized term denoting the presence of a web of interlinked and significant connections—the more intricate the web, the more complex the entity. Complex systems develop only in a milieu that provides both lawfulness and freedom, and they tend to be self‐organizing, becoming more complex and more effective as a result of both inward and outward experience. The evidence suggests that both personal growth and spiritual growth are processes of complexification of character, and of the brain itself. This thesis is tested in light of the work of William James and James W. Fowler. (shrink)

This article focuses on therelationship between science and myth. Its author (1) suggests that the theory of evolutionpro‐vides the most powerful mythic structure for our times; (2) points out the problems that arisefrom the fact that, historically, evolution became yoked to the earlier concept of material,technological “progress”; (3) argues for an interpretation of evolution that is basedon religious and psychological models of human development; and (4) proposes that such aninterpretation, in which personal and social growth is seen as the possible (...) outcome ofevolutionary forces, may act as a corrective to a myth based on material progress. (shrink)