Flow author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has died at 87

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the famous 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, has died at age 87.

I haven't found any obituaries yet, but here's the announcement on his Facebook page.

In 2010, when I made a list of "the 12 books that have influenced me the most," I included Flow.

This post by Ann Althouse (my mom) quoted the book's summary of 8 features of the state of "flow":

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

Here's Csikszentmihalyi's TED talk from 2004: "Flow, the secret to happiness."

In Psychology Today, English professor Vivian Wagner wrote in 2018:

The flow state, a concept first recognized and analyzed by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi …, is a worthy goal for anyone who wants to think and live more creatively. …

In my composition classrooms, I often have students "freewrite" about whatever topic we’re focusing on that day. I find that while they’re freewriting, they enter a state of flow. … This is an especially valuable state because it’s then that creative connections are made. The mind allows itself to think, without the constraints and expectations of the external world. There’s time enough later to look at what we’ve written while in a flow state, but it’s important to be able to stay there for as long as possible in order to reap the benefits from it. …

In our era of multiple distractions, it can be difficult to slip into a flow state. Often, in the middle of doing something — when I might actually be in a flow state — I stop to check my phone or my email or search the web, and those activities break it up. More even than when Csikszentmihalyi first theorized about flow, we’re in great need of it today. …

It’s a beautiful, mysterious process — one that will change your life for the better and bring in a daily dose of creativity. And during those moments of flow, you’ll find yourself making connections, forming ideas, and thinking differently.

(Photo of Csíkszentmihályi from his TED talk.)

Should you "follow your heart" or your "head" when it comes to dating/relationships?

Your head, according to this Psychology Today article:

One famous study conducted in Jaipur, India, compared couples there who married for love—"the Chosen"— to those who wed for family—"the Arranged." As you’d expect, Chosen couples reported being significantly more in love at the start of the marriage than the Arranged. But by the five-year mark, the figures had reversed—with the Arranged couples reporting being in love at the same levels as newlywed Chosen couples had, and the Chosen couples now declined to the newlywed levels of the Arranged couples.

And at the 10-year mark? The effect had doubled. Arranged marriages just kept getting better.

Does that mean that love’s not important in arranged marriage cultures? Hardly. It just means that here, we expect love before marriage; and there, afterward. Here, we expect love to conquer all; there, they expect similarity to pave the way for love.

And, factually speaking, they’re usually right. . . .

I’m not suggesting that you let your family arrange your marriage. If you’re not from such a culture, it could be intensely weird, and daunting for your parents. But I am suggesting we would be wise to emulate arranged-marriage cultures by valuing our heads as much as our hearts—starting with logic and ending with love. To that end:

• Define your standards, making sure they’re realistic and vital;

• Only date those who seem to meet them—ditching those who lack your required qualities, no matter how appealing they might otherwise seem; and

• Let yourself fall for someone from the small group that fits.

In other words, arrange your own marriage. You can do it with the help of the Internet, of course—and recent research suggests that online dating may be associated with longer, happier marriages than those that are launched in person.

Animal minds and meat

Recent studies have found that people are more likely to deny or minimize animal minds when they think of the animals as food, or when they expect to eat meat soon:

[M]eat eaters were asked to think about cows and sheep. Some of them thought about these animals living an idyllic life on a farm. Others thought specifically about these animals growing up on a farm and then being killed for food. Later, they also rated the mental abilities of the animals. When people thought about the animals as food, their ratings of the mental abilities of the animals were lower than when they thought about the animals living on a farm.

It isn't just thinking about animals being used for food, though. In one final study, all of the participants had to write about the process of raising and butchering animals for food. All of the participants thought they were going to do a food sampling task after writing the essay. Half of the participants were told they would be eating fruit during the food sampling, while others were told they would be eating beef and lamb. Finally, participants rated the mental abilities of cows and sheep. The group that was about to eat meat gave much lower ratings of the mental abilities of cows and sheep than the group that was about to eat fruit.

This abstract of the studies theorizes that we deny animal minds in order to reduce our own cognitive dissonance. The dissonance can result from simultaneously wanting to eat meat, yet not wanting to harm beings that have minds.

The cultural subtext on happiness

A blog post in Psychology Today bills itself as "10 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less." The intro tells us: "Here are ten things you can do in ten minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those you love."

3 of the 10 items tell you to do something with "your mate":

Spend a little while watching the sunset with your mate. . . .

Write a thank you note to your mate. . . .

Go to bed with the one you love ten minutes earlier than usual. . . . Let the feeling of warmth from your mate move through you.

Here's my tip for being happy: don't read blog posts that imply you need to be in a relationship to be happy.

Should children be medicated to deal with their psychological issues?

In this book review that's probably a more worthwhile read than the book, Alison Gopnik writes:

Within the past few years more and more children have been given powerful brain-altering drugs to deal with a wide range of problems. . . .

You can sympathize with the impulse of parents to do something, anything at all, to help their children. But that doesn't alter the fact that the scientific evidence just isn't clear about what to do. On balance, though, the evidence suggests that we should be conservative about prescribing drugs to children, and much more conservative than we actually are. Even the scientists who advocate some use of drugs acknowledge that they are overprescribed and badly managed. Brains are complex enough, children's developing brains are even more complex, and determining the long-term effects of drugs that alter those brains is especially difficult. Children are different from adults, often in radical ways, and many childhood problems resolve just as part of development.

On top of that, each generation of doctors discovers that the last generation was disastrously misguided in its medical interventions, from lobotomies to estrogen replacement, at the same time that they assure the patients that this time is different.

I'm also glad to see that the review highlights the importance of compatible "levels of description":

[Judith] Warner's book [We've Got Issues] also reflects a common confusion in popular writing about psychology. She writes as if there are just two kinds of explanations for human behavior. Either the everyday narratives are right—so that children are unhappy because their parents don't care about them, or they fail at school because they are lazy. Or else the right answer is that the children's problems are the result of "something in their brains." Warner's logic seems to be that since the parents do care about their kids, the problem must be in the children's brains and therefore drugs will fix it.

But everything about human beings, cultural or individual, innate or learned, is in our brains. Loss and humiliation change our serotonin levels, education transforms our brain connections, social support affects our cortisol. Neurological and psychological and social processes are inextricable. The work of psychological science is to identify causes at many levels of description—social, cultural, individual, and neurological.

There was a very insightful blog post (on Psychology Today's website) that makes a similar point about evolutionary psychology: "Is it evolutionary, or is it . . . ?" (That post speaks of "levels of causation," which is the same thing as the "levels of description" in the above block quote.) I've also blogged this concept before: "Can you give a neurological or evolutionary explanation of love without debunking the whole idea of love?"

By the way, that book review has several points that could be added to my list of ways blogs are better than books. The bias in favor of conclusions that come from riveting stories is huge.

The most desperate attempt to fit two trendy topics into one headline

A piece in Psychology Today: "Could Michael Jackson Have Created Twitter?"

Why psychology isn't a science

Writing in Psychology Today, Norman N. Holland explains:

The problem comes from the very effort to be scientific. . . . [P]sychological experiments tend to get more and more specific. Experimenters will use exactly defined methods and procedures. They will use highly specific statistical tests appropriate to the experiment at hand. They may select subjects with very special characteristics. All this is, of course, quite appropriate in a discipline seeking to be scientific. But the end result is a teeny, tiny conclusion that cannot be added to other experiments with differently specific subjects, different statistical tests, different methods and procedures. No cumulation. No science....

When I ask my psychology students, What major conclusions about the human mind can you draw from contemporary psychological research?, I draw a blank....

Scientific psychology becomes unscientific because it is dealing with mind, and mind does not lend itself to experimental precision.

Sounds about right. I took a few psychology courses in college, and I was struck by how free the instructors were in stating their random opinions about life as if they were scientific facts. One professor told our class that each one of us in the room could potentially be a victim of a violently abusive relationship, and stay in it on a long-term basis. How could anyone possibly know that?