Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

flow as a “state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an
activity” (p. 130). In summary, studies of peak performance suggest that athletes tend to
perform optimally when they are totally absorbed in the task at hand. This state of mind
is epitomised in a quote from the golfer Darren Clarke who remarked after a tournament
victory that his ball had seemed to be “on the club-face for so long I could almost tell it
where I wanted it to go “(cited in Kimmage, 1998, p. 29L) (see Figure 4.1).
Unfortunately, research on flow states in sport is plagued by some conceptual and
methodological problems that are summarised in Box 4.1.

Box 4.1 Thinking critically about...flow states in sport

Flow states or peak performance experiences tend to occur when people become
absorbed in challenging tasks that demand intense concentration and

commitment (see review in Kimiecik and Jackson, 2002). In such desirable but fleeting
states of mind, performers become so deeply immersed in the activities of the present
moment that they lose track of time, feel highly alert and experience a temporary sense of
euphoria and joy. Research in this field was pioneered by a Hungarian psychologist
named Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-hai”) who set out to
explore the reasons why some people pursue activities (e.g., painting, mountain-
climbing) that appear to offer minimal extrinsic rewards (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).
Briefly, he argued that they do so because of the intrinsic feeling of satisfaction that
arises whenever there is a perfect match between the challenge of the task at hand and the
skill-level of the performer. Since the 1980s, sport psychologists have explored the nature
and characteristics of flow states in athletes. Given the mercurial quality of these states of
mind, however, it is not surprising that research on this topic has encountered conceptual
and methodological difficulties. For example, Jackson (1996) found that some of
Csikszentmihalyi’s s (1990) alleged correlates of flow states were absent from the
experiences of her sample of elite athletes. This finding raises the possibility that flow
experiences may be more taskspecific than was believed previously. Turning to
methodological problems, there is evidence that people are not always reliable judges of
their own mental processes. To illustrate, Brewer, Van Raalte, Under, and Van Raalte
(1991) discovered that when people were given spurious feedback concerning their
performance on certain tasks, they unwittingly distorted their subsequent recall of the
way in which they had performed these tasks. In other words, their recollections of task
performance were easily contaminated by “leading” information. Is there a danger of
similar contamination of athletes’ retrospective accounts of flow states?

Critical thinking questions
Why is it so difficult to predict when flow states are likely to occur? Why, in your
view, are these states so rare in sport? Do you think that athletes could experience flow
states in practice—or do they happen only in competition? Is it possible to study flow
states without disrupting them? Can you think of one advantage and one disadvantage of
using questionnaires to assess athletes’ peak performance experiences (see Jackson and
Eklund, 2002)? What other methods could be used to study flow states? See Jackson
(1996) for some ideas in this regard Do you think that a flow state comesbeforeorafter

Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 100