Flow and Emotional Experience in Spirituality

This study seeks to compare flow and emotional experience in interactive and coactive collective rituals. For such purpose, a correlational study was performed collecting self-report measures of flow, positive emotions, and social identity in three different social collective gatherings: the Sunday celebration of a Catholic mass (N = 57), a Zen Buddhist meditation practice (N = 50), and secular Sunday group activities (N = 37). Results show the presence of flow in all three contexts, being higher in the interactive social situations (the Catholic mass and other Sunday group activities) than in the coactive one (the Zen meditation practice). Positive emotions are also higher in the interactive situations than in the coactive one. Regarding self-transcendent emotions, there is more inspiration in the Zen meditation practice and more hope in the Catholic mass. Flow and positive emotions are positively correlated in all three contexts. Specifically in the Zen meditation practice, flow, positive emotions, loss of self-consciousness, and social identity are positively correlated.

[1]  Jolanda Jetten,et al.  On the nature of identity fusion: insights into the construct and a new measure. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[2]  Actividad estructurada vs. actividad desestructurada, realizadas en solitario vs. en compañía de otros y la experiencia óptima , 2009 .

[3]  Jonathan Haidt,et al.  The Happiness Hypothesis , 2006 .

[4]  M. Bassi,et al.  Psychological Selection and Optimal Experience Across Cultures , 2011 .

[5]  C. J. Walker.  Experiencing flow: Is doing it together better than doing it alone? , 2010 .

[6]  H. Tajfel,et al.  The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. , 2004 .

[7]  Vassilis Saroglou,et al.  Positive emotions as leading to religion and spirituality , 2008 .

[8]  D. Hoang.  FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience , 2018 .

[9]  Robert A Emmons.  Striving for the Sacred: Personal Goals, Life Meaning, and Religion , 2005 .

[10]  Rolf T. Wigand,et al.  Optimal experience of Web activities , 1999 .

[11]  M. Bobowik,et al.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! The impact of Christmas rituals on subjective well-being and family's emotional climate , 2011 .

[12]  Esteve Espelt,et al.  El movimiento 15-M: sus acciones como rituales, compartir social, creencias, valores y emociones , 2013 .

[13]  J. Schüler,et al.  The rewarding effect of flow experience on performance in a marathon race , 2009 .

[14]  James W. Gentry,et al.  The Impact of Flow and Communitas on Enduring Involvement in Extended Service Encounters , 2008 .

[15]  H. Marsh,et al.  Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Optimal Experience: The Flow State Scale , 1996 .

[16]  M. Bassi,et al.  Optimal Experience and Religious Practice , 2011 .

[17]  Jo Bryce,et al.  Putting the fun factor into gaming: The influence of social contexts on the experiences of playing videogames , 2012 .

[18]  A. Lamont.  Emotion, engagement and meaning in strong experiences of music performance , 2012 .

[19]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models , 2008, Behavior research methods.

[20]  D. Páez,et al.  Un modelo socio-cultural de los rituales: efectos y procesos psico-sociales de la participación en manifestaciones después del atentado del 11 de Marzo , 2005 .

[21]  M. Csíkszentmihályi.  Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life , 1997 .

[22]  J. Spickard,et al.  Steps Toward a Sociology of Religious Experience: The Theories of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Alfred Schutz , 1990 .

[23]  M. Bassi,et al.  Optimal Experience and Meditation: Western and Asian Approaches to Well-Being , 2011 .

[24]  B. Rimé,et al.  Positive Emotions and Self-Transcendence , 2013 .

[25]  Eduardo Cervelló Gimeno,et al.  Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Flow State Scale. , 2008, The Spanish journal of psychology.

[26]  M. Csíkszentmihályi,et al.  Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. , 1988 .

[27]  Victor Turner,et al.  Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology , 1974 .

[28]  Robert Biswas-Diener,et al.  Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth , 2008 .

[29]  P. Zimbardo.  The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. , 1969 .

[30]  P. Camic,et al.  Benefits of choral singing for social and mental wellbeing: qualitative findings from a cross‐national survey of choir members , 2012 .

[31]  Magdalena Bobowik,et al.  Evaluación de la afectividad durante diferentes episodios emocionales , 2011 .