Talk:Flow (psychology)

message: Video games seem designed to elicit "flow." (comment by Atticus)
: Yeah, I noticed that, too. Tetris seems to be very good at this. Also, non-video game Sudoku is fantastic at inducing flow. Peter S. 11:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I play a lot of rhythm games and I experience this all the time. I enjoy games such as Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and other less popular rhythm games for the sole purpose of achieving flow. It is a good feeling.Andrew zot 07:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with the uncited statement that Guitar Hero is particularly known for achieving flow.  Rhythm games work well for many people, but rhythm games don't work best for everyone, nor is Guitar Hero necessarily the seminal example.  They follow the same basic concept as the old Shoot 'em up games. Anecdotally, I'm terrible at them, as are many people I know.  Games that require large scale organizational thinking such as city/civilization builders and strategy games, as well as those that require reflex such as FPS, best help me find flow, and unsurprisingly I find them most enjoyable.  I think it's enough to say that video games are designed around the flow experience, often consciously, and that different players will achieve flow in games that best suit them. (comment by Nphyx)
----
Comment on flow in Video Games, by George Blank
In 1978, I wrote an article applying and analyzing the concept of flow in computer games.  The two part article, "Writing Good Computer Games," appeared in the January and February 1979 issues of SoftSide magazine (Milford NH)and was reprinted in Judge's Guild Journal, Issue L, 1979.  The concept of flow was critical to me in writing the first graphical "God game" for microcomputers, "Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio." That game launched a billion dollar industry of games based on guns versus butter economic tradeoffs resulting in graphical empire building and character development.
Personal definition after flow experiences
You know you had ‘Flow’ when you have just completed a challenging task, and you do not know where you got the extraordinary creativity from, that you just demonstrated. You felt exhilarated. Your concentration was so deeply focused on what you were doing that nothing else mattered. You performed at your peak, with extreme inner fulfillment, with the satisfaction that your previous limits were surpassed. The pure pleasure distilled from doing the task overwhelmed all external influences. It catapulted you into the harmonious flow of spontaneity, creativity, effectuality and natural psychic energy.--Louispalm 09:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Comparison between flow experience and video games is of course foundation of famous Zenclavier article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ceplm (talk • contribs) 09:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I removed the portion jabbering on about MMORPGs because flow is not exclusive to that genre, and the reference used makes no mention of MMORPGs either, which pretty much implies the contributer is -- much like most MMORPGers-- biased toward that genre to the exclusion of others. Ffxi frohike 9:14 PST, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Video games would seam to negate this statement made in the article: "Up to now, there is no ideal possibility available to directly investigate causal consequences of flow experiences as it is difficult to manipulate such a specific state of consciousness in the laboratory." Video Gamers enter a state of flow very quickly and all the equipment needed for them to enter this state of flow could easily fit inside a lab. The state of flow could then be altered by causing a distraction and measuring resulting game performance, sounds easy enough to me. -- Aaron Klapheck 98.238.167.205 (talk) 03:39, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flow and Video Games 

message: I have added to the goal component to account for attainability.  Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes this stating that one's goal must be reasonably attainable to avoid frustrations that would disrupt the flow process, but must also be difficult enough to engage the individual enough to allow for the experience of flow.  As an example, I would be unlikely to achieve flow through attempting to solve extraordinarily complex applied mathematics equations, whereas learning to play guitar may allow me to reach this state. L00ptid 01:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goal Attainability 

message: Questionable statement: "Proposed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields." - if that is so, why are almost all the references by Csíkszentmihályi?  And why are none of the others scholarly?  If it's studied in psychology, at least reference a journal.  I say change the sentence to "Proposed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a number of books have since been written on the topic." Winter Breeze (talk) 09:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to second this with a request for anyone knowledgeable about the subject to add sources other than Csíkszentmihályi to the article. As the supposed opposite of something as fundamentally accepted as apathy, there have GOT to be some other sources out there with information specifically pertaining to this concept. KrisWood (talk) 04:42, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, this article remains very Csíkszentmihályi-centric.  If this is just one researcher's theory, then maybe the article can be scaled way back to an encyclopedic summary of the idea rather than an in-depth essay. Henry chianski (talk) 00:56, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Csíkszentmihályi-centric 

message: I have removed the following link: "* The Flow Experience: The Summa Cum Lousy Of Bad Psychology Contrarian view of flow." It seemed improper for an encyclopedia to link to a source that includes no author name, contact address or any other information that would make it credible. Dvyjns (talk) 21:51, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed External Link 

message: It would perhaps be interesting to add a section on what happens if flow is broken for some reason. ISTR a report that it takes at least 15 minutes to get back in. My personal experiences include complete loss of concentration and immediate energy deficits, and up to having to call it a day and need to sleep. I don't have references, however. 85.179.81.31 (talk) 14:44, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consequences of loss of flow 

message: i added "For a general audience [Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as] the positive aspects of human experience—joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life.”   I am new to the site.  So go easy on me please.  I just wanted to add something, because i'm having issues using Wikipedia.  I'm finding it excessively difficult to navigate...but yeah, just wanted to add something from his book Flow: The psychology of Optimal Experience
Cheers,
Lucy
--ToasterCoster (talk) 00:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life 

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thread_title:  Image copyright problem with File:Davis at Birdland.jpg 

message: Only Csíkszentmihályi seems to have published suggestions for extrinsic applications of the Flow concept, such as design methods for playgrounds to elicit the Flow experience.
:I'm not entirely sure this is true.  There are many applications in design, but they go by other names. Viriditas (talk) 12:08, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extrinsic applications 

message: I'm surprised there is nothing about trance and altered states in this article. Viriditas (talk) 12:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I felt I should comment on these, because a trance state is such an interesting idea. I can see there is likely a connection between flow state and a trance state, or at least a slight dissociation, which can be connected to the concept of a trance state. I found this article that might lend more information on that connection, and perhaps I will return later to add some of that information.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22651681/ NotQuiteAllison (talk) 04:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trance state 

message: Flow is so named because during Csíkszentmihályi's 1975 interviews several people described their 'flow' experiences using the metaphor of a water current carrying them along.[3]
:This needs to be checked out for accuracy.  Other reliable sources say this term came from rock climbing. Viriditas (talk) 12:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: Only Csíkszentmihályi seems to have published suggestions for extrinsic applications of the Flow concept, such as design methods for playgrounds to elicit the Flow experience. (1) Doesn't game desing discuss ways to design games to facilitate flow? (2) Where is the reference for Csíkszentmihályi's suggestions for playground-design?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.138.201 (talk) 17:33, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only Csíkszentmihályi 

message: People have been freely adding applications of flow without any references. I removed these just now:
*MMA champion and Karate master Lyoto Machida utilizes meditation techniques before fights in order to attain mushin, a concept of absolute focus in all respects equal to Flow.
*Waiters and waitresses often describe experiencing flow when they feel that everything would collapse if they had one more table or one more person to wait on; when they're rushing but not too busy or overwhelmed.
We need more than "Hey, that's sounds like something I know about; let me add an example". Even a reference provided for a published discussion of mushin or feeling maxed out when waiting on tables seems insufficient to me. I think we need a published discussion which explicitly connects the activity in question to the psychological concept of flow or at least to a concept (like "in the zone") that has been explicitly connected to flow in some other published reliable sources. -DoctorW 17:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Applications of flow, and references 

message: Psychologists have found that one's mind can only attend to a certain amount of information at a time. According to Miller's 1956 study, ...
A link to this would be very helpful. --LCE(LCE talk contribs) 11:02, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mechanism of Flow - Miller? 

message: There are quite a few mentions of people feeling as if they are no longer consciously performing a task... I would like to see something about the neurological mechanisms of this phenomenon. While I am in a state of flow I have often got the feeling that if I allowed my conscious mind to take over, it would fail in the task that the subconscious was succeeding in. Like the way the basic microcontroller in a washing machine could run it much more reliably and efficiently than a full windows PC hooked up to it, even though the windows PC is viewed as a more "intelligent" machine. 192.198.151.37 (talk) 13:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flow and the subconscious 

message: The teachings of Buddhism speak of a state of mind known as the "action of inaction" or "doing without doing" that greatly resembles the idea of flow.
It sounds to me like the author is getting Buddhism and Taoism mixed up (non-action - wu wei). If not, as has been said, we need a citation for this if it is to be kept at all. Solri (talk) 16:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-action 

message: This article seems to me to have validity ONLY if it is about something specific etc in this case Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of Flow.  
His concept of Flow should not to be confused with other uses of the word "flow", any more than the word Affect should be confused with other meanings and uses of the word "affect".  In my opinion this causes some confusion in a general article such as this, for a varied readership etc,  which could be avoided if the word Flow were capitalised where it refers to the proper noun coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and left in lower case when it is used as a simple noun or verb.  
To me the sort of meta-theory that this article is in danger of trying to set out, or which this discussion seems to in parts request it to become, is something else entirely, namely an original piece of work, collaboratively authored, but nonetheless which is therefore unsuitable as a wikipedia article.
I have not tagged the article as original research but there seems to be enough grounds to see it as such at this time.
LookingGlass (talk) 20:11, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Feels legitimate enough to me. Although the differentiation between 'Flow' and 'HyperFocus' seem to be intangible. also i seem to have trouble seeing why the word 'affect' is used rather than 'effect' in one of the section headings --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 14:38, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Validity, Capitalization, Definition and Original, collaborative research 

message: I like the idea of flow while surfing the web. Sounds relative logical that that can happen.
However, the Hsiang reference is a bit often in there. It's the first reference I ever saw where single letters of the alphabet were not enough. ;-)
So that must be significantly shortened and be more concise rather than just a listing of accumulated citations of unknown individuals gathered by one research paper. Guess the Wikipedia doesn't want to be a forum of lots of individuals opinions if these are not even known. Otherwise there'd be 3 billion lines of everyone soon in here. ;-)
These more 1.5 pages should shrink to say 2x 5 lines. And not a single citation of web users in there at all. 
Still wondering if web related flow would be a special case of knowledge gathering flow in general, just in a different medium.
Against web as flow experiences speaks actually that you got lots of breaks in between through page loading etc.
Cheers, Peterthewall (talk) 11:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the section because it was giving far too much attention to a single work.   The entire contents of the section should be given one or two sentences elsewhere on the page, not several pages of quotations. Nippashish (talk) 21:07, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flow in the Web 

message: Many of the parenthetical citations do not correspond with full bibliographic information appearing elsewhere in this article. I've fixed a few of these, where a title or publication were provided in the text. Someone more familiar with the literature on this subject might be better equipped to locate details for those providing only author(s) and date. —Shelley V. Adams 04:40, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incomplete parenthetical citations 

message: The mental state described here can also mean losing one's contact with reality and surrounding in a negative, potentially harmful way. For example, when one is driving, he/she has to focus on the environment instead of getting lost in thoughts, which could potentially lead to a serious accident. It seems to be a promotion for the marketable concept of "flow" rather than a scientific examination on the subject.
:This is a serious shortcoming in this article and I wish to bring attention to it. --Pitke (talk) 14:20, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: How about moving the 'Criticism' to 'Possible Negative Effects'? The content of 'Criticism' doesn't sound like criticism of the psychological concept 'Flow', but more like a description of negative consequences Thomas-rebele (talk) 17:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand how the scenario you described is flow.  Not paying attention to the task you are doing is the opposite of flow.  2604:2D80:D50B:1900:6477:D5FD:295F:BE7E (talk) 23:32, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Failure to Mention Its Possible Negative Effects 

message: This whole article needs to be rewritten to become a bit more objective and formal.  It reads quite unprofessionally.  For instance, refer to the section on Mechanism.  Statements like "That may seem like a large number" come across as sloppy.  There is very little scientific analysis in the whole of the article.  Where is the research???  Seems to be very little valuable information here.
Seriously... "Going ham"?  Who wrote this article??
In all honesty, the best way for someone searching for flow in a task is just to go out into the real world and experience life for themselves.  The abstract study of the phenomenon will likely yield minor results.
No All Who Wander Are Lost (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:39, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tonal Shift 

message: Can anyone provide information on what specific brainwave frequencies are associated with being in flow or zone?
Thanks!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.111.150.56 (talk) 00:16, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  brainwave frequencies? 

message: Change that ugly picture with the girl doing *something* to a more relevant picture demonstrating a clearly defined TASK.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.122.51 (talk) 10:16, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Clearly 'ugly' is a subjective term and while i get your point the picture is trying to show the "Focus" aspect. The completing task's more easily is merely a biproduct. NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 14:41, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change picture 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I've boldly removed the (one source) template placed in Nov 2019.
The template stated that "the article relies largely or entirely on a single source".  
This problem is not apparent at this time. Currently, several dozen different sources are cited in the article. 
Per WP:WTRMT, the template can be removed. 
- 2804:14D:5C59:8833:1878:872B:79E4:568 (talk) 19:29, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed the (one source) template placed in Nov 2019. Said problem is not apparent at this time. 

message: — Assignment last updated by NotQuiteAllison (talk) 20:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Adult Development Winter 2023

message: — Assignment last updated by Lvrpl (talk) 03:36, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Mind-Body

message: The final section on future directions reads like it's randomly thrown together. There must be hundreds of potential directions for future work, there always is, why mention these ones in particular? In fact, why mention any? Some discussion of future research may be fitting for an academic paper (though even there it is often a tick-the-box component), I don't see it's value in a wikipedia article. Bollus101 (talk) 15:41, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: This section was random seeming... I added a more comprehensive view of the potential areas of future research to the section. I also agree that the implications for future research may not have a place in a wikipedia article, but rather at the end of a research paper. But I did improve the section and attempted to make it fit the article more Positive not popular pysch (talk) 20:32, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Value of Future Directions Section? 

message: ==== Performance and learning ====
I think we should improve this section to better reflect the evidences on correlational relationship and causal relationship:
- Flow experiences imply a growth principle. -> Flow increases performance, no evidence
- To maintain that flow state, one must seek increasingly greater challenges. -> Performance increases flow, longitudinal evidence only introduced way later in the section
- By increasing time spent in flow, intrinsic motivation and self-directed learning also increases. -> Flow increases performance, but longitudinal studies are a type of correlational research, not causal research
- Flow has been linked to persistence and achievement in activities while also helping to lower anxiety during various activities and raise self-esteem. -> we should verify if "linked" and "helping" is causal or correlational
- In the long run, flow experiences in a specific activity may lead to higher performance in that activity as flow is positively correlated with a higher subsequent motivation to perform and to perform well. -> I think we should avoid speculation here
 Ndminhkhoi46 (talk) 02:22, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outcomes 

message: I think we should improve this section to better reflect the evidences on correlational relationship and causal relationship:
- Flow experiences imply a growth principle. -> Flow increases performance, no evidence
- To maintain that flow state, one must seek increasingly greater challenges. -> Performance increases flow, longitudinal evidence only introduced way later in the section
- By increasing time spent in flow, intrinsic motivation and self-directed learning also increases. -> Flow increases performance, but longitudinal studies are a type of correlational research, not causal research
- Flow has been linked to persistence and achievement in activities while also helping to lower anxiety during various activities and raise self-esteem. -> we should verify if "linked" and "helping" is causal or correlational
- In the long run, flow experiences in a specific activity may lead to higher performance in that activity as flow is positively correlated with a higher subsequent motivation to perform and to perform well. -> I think we should avoid speculation here
 Ndminhkhoi46 (talk) 02:22, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Performance and learning 

message: — Assignment last updated by Rahneli (talk) 20:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone

message: — Assignment last updated by Iceman2077 (talk) 20:32, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Adult Development Spring 2023

message: — Assignment last updated by TIME137TSS (talk) 01:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: PSYC 115 General Psychology

message: Adding to group flow (making the distinction between individual flow and group flow more clear)
Adding a section about the physiology of group flow. Due to developing research about the cardiovascular synchronization that occurs when group flow occurs.  Snijdewint et al. 
Treeluver20 (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Group Flow and Physiology 

message: The redirect Flow (psychology has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Utopes (talk / cont) 01:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Flow (psychology]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]