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Category: Project

Description: Flow, a psychological state of intense engagement in and enjoyment of an activity, can arise during both solitary and socially-interactive experiences. Whereas people high in extraversion have difficulty achieving flow in solitude, those with an autotelic personality—a combination of traits that make people particularly prone to flow—readily experience flow in both solitary and interactive conditions. This Stage 1 report preregisters an experiment to investigate whether autotelic personality mitigates the negative association between solitary flow and extraversion. Participants and their romantic partners (target N=190) will play the game Perfection™ in three conditions (order will be counterbalanced): alone (solitary condition), in the presence of their partner without interaction (mere-presence condition), and collaboratively (interactive condition). We hypothesize that autotelic personality will positively predict flow in all conditions, whereas extraversion will positively predict flow in the interactive condition and negatively predict flow in the solitary and mere-presence condition. We further hypothesize that the (negative) effect of extraversion on flow in the solitary condition will be weaker among participants high in autotelic personality. The findings will 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.