Going with the Flow Examining the relationship between human movements and the psychological experience of flow

Abstract

Record ID: 153

Program Affiliation: University Honors Program

Student Major: Psychology BA; Philosophy

Project Advisor: Tehran Davis

Abstract: A flow state is a multi-dimensional subjective experience of synergy between one's abilities and a given task. Individuals experiencing flow report a heightened sense of action-awareness, concentration, control, amongst other phenomena. The sensation of flow has largely been evaluated using qualitative, survey-based methodologies. Recent work from Montull et al. (2020) reframes flow as an essentially embodied experience that may be quantified behaviorally using embodied measures of actor's task related movements. Here, we followed a similar logic in combining the flow state scale survey and embodied measures to examine the relationship between the range of flow experiences and embodied movement dynamics when solving a Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Our results point to a relationship between measures of embodiment and the subjective experience of flow when completing the puzzle. Implications for experiences of flow in real versus virtual environments (e.g., performing similar tasks in virtual reality) will also be discussed.