摘要：We review the psychological theory of flow and focus on the notion of the autotelic personality,arguing that self-transcendence (understood within the existential tradition ofFrankl and Längle as the individual’s ability to establish inner relationships with values)can be viewed as a personality disposition conducive to flow experience. The study aimedto investigate the effects of situational task meaning and dispositional self-transcendenceon productivity and flow experience. We present a pilot quasi-experimental study conductedin a student sample (N = 82) Students were asked to work in small-group settingson a creative task, which consisted in finding solutions to a social problem. Each groupwas randomly assigned to an instruction presenting the problem as happening either in adistant country (low-meaning) or in their home country (high-meaning condition). Theoutcome variables were measures of flow, perceived meaning of the task, and satisfactionwith time spent working. The solutions generated by the students were rated by threeexperts. The experimental manipulation had a main effect on the quality of the resultingsolutions, but not on the subjective experience of the participants. A number of significantinteraction effects were found, indicating that the associations of self-transcendencewith experiential outcomes tended to be linear under the low-meaning condition, butcurvilinear under the high-meaning condition. The findings suggest that self-transcendenceis particularly beneficial to flow in situations with unclear meaning, but very highlevels of self-transcendence may hinder flow in highly meaningful situations. Overall,the findings suggest that self-transcendence can be considered as a disposition of theautotelic personality.
关键词：flow experience; self-transcendence; personal meaning; autotelic personality
