The Flow Experience Revisited: The Influence of Skills-Demands-Compatibility on Experiential and Physiological Indicators

The experience of flow is typically described as an “optimal experience”. In the literature discussing the flow experience, one frequently finds the advice to maximize time in flow to enhance life-satisfaction and well-being. However, this advice seems premature because consequences of flow experiences have not been systematically assessed yet. In order to address this gap, we investigated the influence of skills-demands-compatibility (the central precondition of flow experiences) on several experiential and physiological processes in a series of experiments. The experience of (non-)flow was manipulated based on different modes of computerized tasks. Participants worked on the tasks either in one of two non-adaptive conditions (“boredom” or “overload”), or in an adaptive condition, in which the difficulty level is constantly adapted to participants’ individual performance level. The results of our studies provide evidence documenting the specific nature of the state of flow – specifically regarding experiential and physiological processes.

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