Self-transcendence facilitates meaning-making and flow: Evidence from a pilot experimental study

Abstract

We review the psychological theory of flow and focus on the notion of the autotelic personality, arguing that self-transcendence (understood within the existential tradition of Frankl and Längle as the individual’s ability to establish inner relationships with values) can be viewed as a personality disposition conducive to flow experience. The study aimed to investigate the effects of situational task meaning and dispositional self-transcendence on productivity and flow experience. We present a pilot quasi-experimental study conducted in a student sample (N = 82) Students were asked to work in small-group settings on a creative task, which consisted in finding solutions to a social problem. Each group was randomly assigned to an instruction presenting the problem as happening either in a distant country (low-meaning) or in their home country (high-meaning condition). The outcome variables were measures of flow, perceived meaning of the task, and satisfaction with time spent working. The solutions generated by the students were rated by three experts. The experimental manipulation had a main effect on the quality of the resulting solutions, but not on the subjective experience of the participants. A number of significant interaction effects were found, indicating that the associations of self-transcendence with experiential outcomes tended to be linear under the low-meaning condition, but curvilinear under the high-meaning condition. The findings suggest that self-transcendence is particularly beneficial to flow in situations with unclear meaning, but very high levels of self-transcendence may hinder flow in highly meaningful situations. Overall, the findings suggest that self-transcendence can be considered as a disposition of the autotelic personality.