Objective/BackgroundFlow, a psychological state of intense engagement in and enjoyment of an activity, can arise during both solitary and socially interactive experiences. In the literature, whereas people high in extraversion have difficulty achieving flow in solitude, those with an autotelic personality—a combination of traits that make people prone to flow—readily experience flow in both solitary and interactive conditions. In this pre‐registered experiment, we investigated whether autotelic personality mitigates the negative association between solitary flow and extraversion.MethodParticipants and their romantic partners (final N = 368) played the game Perfection™ in three conditions (order was counterbalanced): alone (solitary condition), in the presence of their partner without interaction (mere‐presence condition), and collaboratively (interactive condition).ResultsThere were independent, positive main effects of extraversion and autotelic personality on flow experience in mere‐presence and interactive conditions. However, the positive effect of extraversion on solitary flow was only significant among participants with high (vs. low) autotelic personality. In all conditions, flow experience was associated with greater low‐arousal positive affect and lesser high‐arousal negative affect.ConclusionsThe findings shed light on the role of personality in promoting solitary flow experiences, and particularly how traits might interact to determine optimal and non‐optimal conditions for achieving flow.

中文翻译：

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孤独但流动：自得其乐的人格和外向性对孤独流动的影响


目标/背景流是一种强烈参与和享受某项活动的心理状态，在单独和社交互动体验中都可能出现。在文献中，外向性高的人很难在孤独中实现心流，而那些具有自得其乐人格（使人们容易心流的特征组合）的人很容易在独处和互动条件下体验心流。在这个预先注册的实验中，我们研究了自得其乐的人格是否减轻了孤独流和外向性之间的负相关。方法参与者和他们的浪漫伴侣（最终氮= 368) 在三种情况下玩 Perfection™ 游戏（顺序被平衡）：单独（孤独的状况），在他们的伴侣在场的情况下，没有互动（单纯存在条件），并协作（交互条件).结果在纯粹存在和互动条件下，外向性和自得利性人格对心流体验有独立的、积极的主效应。然而，外向性对孤独流的积极影响仅在具有高（相对于低）自得性人格的参与者中才显着。在所有情况下，心流体验都与较高的低唤醒积极情绪和较少的高唤醒消极情绪相关。结论研究结果揭示了人格在促进孤独心流体验中的作用，特别是特征如何相互作用以确定最佳和非实现流动的最佳条件。