Measuring the optimal experience: The example sampling method.
“Skywalking” is a form of extreme sports that involves climbing up to the top of high-rise structures and taking audacious pictures. In order to produce breathtaking pictures, these photographers climb skyscrapers with almost no safety gear while risking their lives.
From looking at this death-defying activity we can address a question, why would people pursue such a dangerous activity? A skywalker Marat Dupri said that “When I am on the roof, all my problems and trouble are left somewhere down. The height exhilarates me. I am enjoying with my home town views.” Through skywalking Dupri is feeling complete concentration and experiencing enjoyment and such a feeling is what we often come across when we play a good game of soccer or participate in an interesting debate. According to a positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this kind of fully immersed positive experience is called the ‘flow’ experience. Flow is defined as a mental state which describes the feeling of spontaneous joy through deep focus on the activity itself. Although skywalking is an extreme example, people tend to engage in difficult, time consuming and dangerous activities and experience flow out of it. Moreover, Csikszentmihalyi argues that almost every activity such as work, study, and play can produce flow.
To construe and test the concept of ‘flow’ Csikszentmihalyi developed a psychological test which measures subjective feelings of the optimal experience. First, he obtained pilot data of the flow experiences by conducting interviews and asking how respondents felt during their favourite activities. Through this qualitative approach, he was able to collect contextual and holistic aspects of the flow experience. However, interviewing process had some limitations regarding its time consuming nature and it was also difficult to compare and code the data. Thus, Csikszentmihalyi developed Flow Questionnaire based on quotes and phrases collected during earlier interviews. The flow questionnaire includes questions like: “my mind isn’t wandering,” “I am not thinking of something else,” “I am totally involved in what I am doing.” Through the development of the flow questionnaire, Csikszentmihalyi was able to make quantitative comparison between certain activities and respondents’ emotions.
Furthermore, to measure more precise intensity and frequency of the flow experience throughout everyday life, Csikszentmihalyi developed more elaborate real-time data capture technique: experience sampling method (ESM). Electronic pager and self-report forms are given to each respondents and their job is to fill out the self-report forms whenever pager buzzes. Within a day 8 pager signals will be sent for a week period collecting vast data about time, location, activity, content of thought, and companionship. Also, ESM enabled real-time data collecting: quality and intensity of various moods, cognitive efforts, and self-esteem information.
The ESM is designed in a way to overcome retrospective biases which can be caused by memory recall failure and poor inference strategy. Through ESM Csikszentmihalyi could gather frequency and intensity data of activities which yield the mental state of the flow or the optimal experience.
To understand subjective feelings of skywalking, we could administer ESM to skywalkers and quantitatively measure their internal state fluctuations throughout their everyday life including times when they are skywalking.
