THE FLOW EXPERIENCE OCCURS WHEN SOMEONE FULL

It is therefore clear because fundamental to its very definition, the experience of flow has an intrinsic relation with the situation, and particularly with the interplay between personal characteristics and the features of the contextual surround: provided that a balance and match is realized between high individual’s skills and high contextual challenges. The term “flow” describes optimal experiences that are among the most enjoyable in human life ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1982), and such experience may emerge in any situation or place in which there is an ongoing activity ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1997), as well as when there are clear goals, immediate feedback, and good balance between skills of a person and the challenge of the activity ( Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1988 Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre, 1989 Waterman et al., 2003).

THE FLOW EXPERIENCE OCCURS WHEN SOMEONE FULL

Optimal experience, or flow, within positive psychology, has received worldwide attention since its birth ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1975/2000): it depicts the psychological mental state of a person who is immersed in an activity with energized concentration, optimal enjoyment, full involvement, and intrinsic interests, and who is usually focused, motivated, positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1975/2000, 1990). Introduction Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience through Various Activities More generally, this study has implications for maintaining or enhancing one’s own place identity, and therefore people–place relations, by means of facilitating a person’s flow experience within psychologically meaningful places. Results are also discussed in terms of their implications for EIT’s understanding and enrichment, especially by its generalization from the traditional, personal identity level up to that of place identity.

Such findings provide the first quantitative evidence about the link between flow experienced during meaningfully located self-defining activities and identity experienced at the place level, similarly to the corresponding personal and social levels that had been previously already empirically tested. The overall findings revealed that flow experience occurring in one’s own preferred place is widely reported as resulting from a range of self-defining activities, irrespective of gender or age, and it is positively and significantly associated with one’s own place identity. Questionnaire surveys on Italian and Greek residents focused on their perceived flow and place identity in relation to their own specific local place experiences. The study is also based on flow theory, according to which some salient features of an activity experience are important for happiness and well-being.

This study focuses on place identity, the identity’s features relating to a person’s relation with her/his place. This study examined the relationship between flow experience and place identity, based on eudaimonistic identity theory (EIT) which prioritizes self-defining activities as important for an individual’s identification of his/her goals, values, beliefs, and interests corresponding to one’s own identity development or enhancement.

6Università per Stranieri “Dante Alighieri” di Reggio Calabria, Reggio Calabria, Italy.

5Department of Early Childhood Education, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.

4Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA.

3School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China.

2Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca in Psicologia Ambientale, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy.

1Dipartimento di Psicologia dei Processi di Sviluppo e Socializzazione, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy.Marino Bonaiuto 1,2*, Yanhui Mao 3*, Scott Roberts 4, Anastasia Psalti 5, Silvia Ariccio 1, Uberta Ganucci Cancellieri 6 and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 4

The flow experience occurs when someone