Flow Experience in Cyberspace: Current Studies and Perspectives

Cyberspace constitutes a specific environment; the investigations in this field are based either on the original cyberspace-dependent methods and theories, or on universal theories and methods worked out in diverse areas of knowledge, not necessarily closely connected with cyberspace. A psychological theoretical construct (with vast practical perspectives) introduced by Csikszentmihalyi, (2000/1975) known as optimal, or flow experience, alongside the methods of its measurement, basically refer to the universal, that is, nonspecific theoretical and methodological background. This traditional methodology was adapted and accepted within cyberspace; it represents a growing area of the investigators’ activity in the field. Like many other investigations of human behavior in cyberspace, flowrelated studies are of both practical and theoretical significance. The practical significance is associated with the challenges deriving from business: a large body of research is stimulated by business expectations of acquiring advantages in the quality of offers to be suggested to customers. The theoretical significance stems from a supposition that optimal experience is an important construct mediating human activity in cyberspace, and thus represents a special level of psychological mediation of mental processes. The mechanisms of multiple mediation and remediation of a previously mediated experience are known to affect human psychic development (Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1962). In this chapter, major research directions are presented and discussed, referring to the optimal, or flow, experience studies conducted within cyberspace environments. The chapter starts with a brief description of optimal experience in the context of positive psychology; the origin and the meaning of a relatively new term flow is explained, and several examples are provided. Flow is certainly connected with intrinsic motivation, which is distinguished in the chapter from extrinsic motivation. Some examples are given, and various methods of carrying out flow experience investigations are discussed. The distinctive characteristics of flow, introduced and validated by Csikszentmihalyi, are presented, alongside several additional characteristics introduced by researchers working in the field of cyberspace-related studies of the optimal experience. Cumulatively, flow characteristics should constitute a valid universal methodological instrument to be used in quantitative measurements. In many cases, though, this is not so, because the sets of flow related characteristics slightly vary in the different empirical studies. In a way, these