A computational theory of the subjective experience of flow
Nature Communications April 26, 2022 David E. Melnikoff, Ryan W. Carlson, Paul E. Stillman
Flow—the immersive, engaging feeling of being 'in the zone'—is well known to boost productivity and health, but what causes it has been unclear. A new theory proposes that flow arises from the mutual information between desired goals and the means to achieve them, a measure of how strongly two variables are linked. Across five experiments (four preregistered), increasing this mutual information consistently increased flow and improved attention and enjoyment. The effect held even when controlling for other psychological factors and alternative measures of association. The findings offer a formal, computational account of how the mind generates the experience of flow.