Flow, performance and moderators of challenge-skill balance

摘要

The concept of flow is briefly reviewed andseveral theoretical and methodological problems related toflow research are discussed. In three studies, we attemptedto avoid these problems by measuring the experience offlow in its components, rather than operationally definingflow in terms of challenge and skill. With this measure, wetested the assumption that experience of flow substantiallydepends on the balance of challenge and skill. Thisassumption could only be partially supported, and, asexpected, this relationship was moderated by the (per-ceived) importance of the activity and by the achievementmotive. Furthermore, flow predicted performance in two ofthe three studies.