NOTES ■ 255
67 The essential connection between something like happiness, enjoyment,
and even virtue, on the one hand, and intrinsic or autotelic rewards
on the other has been generally recognized by thinkers in a variety of
cultural traditions. It is essential to the Taoist concept of Yu, or right
living (e.g., the basic writings of Chuang Tzu, translated by Watson
1964); to the Aristotelian concept of virtue (MacIntyre 1984); and to the
Hindu attitude toward life that infuses the Bhagavad Gita.
68 The generalizations about people being dissatisfied with work and
with leisure time are based on our studies with the Experience Sam
pling Method (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi &. Graef 1979, 1980; Graef, Csik
szentmihalyi, & Gianinno, 1983; Csikszentmihalyi &. LeFevre 1987,
1989; and LeFevre 1988). The conclusions are based on the momentary
responses adult workers wrote down whenever they were paged at ran
dom times on their jobs. When workers respond to large-scale surveys,
however, they often tend to give much more favorable global responses.
A compilation of 15 studies of job satisfaction carried out between 1972
and 1978 concluded that 3 percent of U.S. workers are “very dissatis
fied” with their jobs, 9 percent are “somewhat dissatisfied,” 36 percent
are “somewhat satisfied,” and 52 percent are “very satisfied” (Argyle
1987, pp. 31-63). A more recent national survey conducted by Robert
Half International and reported in the Chicago Tribune (Oct. 18, 1987,
sect. 8 ) arrives at much less rosy results. According to this study, 24
percent of the U.S. work force, or one worker in four, is quite dissatisfied
with his or her job. Our methods of measuring satisfaction may be too
stringent, whereas the survey methods are likely to give results that are
too optimistic. It should be easy to find out whether a group of people
are “satisfied” or “dissatisfied” with work. In reality, because satisfaction
is such a relative concept, it is very difficult to give an objective answer
to this simple question. It is rather like whether one should say “half
full” or “half empty” when asked to describe a glass with water halfway
up (or down) the container. In a recent book by two outstanding Ger
man social scientists, the authors came to diametrically opposed conclu
sions about German workers’ attitudes toward work, one claiming they
loved it, the other that they hated it, even though they were both
arguing from the same exhaustive and detailed survey data base (Noelle-
Neumann & Strumpel 1984). The counterintuitive finding that people
tend to rate work as more satisfying than leisure has been noticed by
several investigators (e.g., Andrews &. Withey 1976, Robinson 1977).
For example, Veroff, Douvan, & Kulka (1981) report that 49 percent
of employed men claim work is more satisfying for them than leisure,
whereas only 19 percent say that leisure is more satisfying than work.
69 The dangers of addiction to flow have been dealt with in more detail
by Csikszentmihalyi (1985b).
