The luxury microwave meal was delicious, the house is warm, work’s going OK, but you’re just not feeling very happy. Some positive psychologists believe this is because many of us in rich, Western countries spend too much of our free time on passive activities, like bingeing on Netflix and browsing Twitter, rather than on active, psychologically demanding activities, like cooking, sports or playing music, that allow the opportunity to experience “flow” – that magic juncture where your abilities only just meet the demands of the challenge. A new paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology examines this dilemma. Do we realise that pursuing more active, challenging activities will make us happier in the long-run? If so, why then do we opt to spend so much more time lazing around engaged in activities that are pleasant in the moment, but unlikely to bring any lasting fulfilment?
奢华的微波炉烤肉美味又可口,房子很温暖,工作也很好,但你就是觉得不太开心。一些积极心理学家认为,这是因为我们中的许多人生活丰富,西方国家花费了我们太多的自由时间在被动的活动之中,就像是把时间用于浏览Netflix视频网站或推特,而不是积极的心理需求的活动,如做饭、体育或玩音乐,以便有机会去体验“心流”,在这个魔法时刻,你的能力恰好满足了挑战的需求。在《积极心理学杂志》上的一篇新论文探讨了这一困境。我们是否意识到,追求更积极、更有挑战性的活动会让我们更快乐?如果是这样,那么为什么我们会磨磨蹭蹭的花那么多时间从事于即刻愉快的活动,但是,这些活动又不会带来任何持久的成就?
Across two studies, L. Parker Schiffer and Tomi-Ann Roberts at the Claremont Graduate University and Colorado College, surveyed nearly 300 people (presumably US citizens, average age 33/34 years) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website about what they thought of dozens of different activities: some passive like listening to music or watching movies, others more active and potentially flow-inducing, such as making art or meditating. Specifically, the participants rated how enjoyable, effortful, and daunting they considered the activities to be, as well as how often they engaged in each of them in a typical week. The participants also identified which activities they considered the most and least conducive to lasting happiness.
幸福的活动。
在两个研究中,克莱蒙特研究大学的L. Parker Schiffer和科罗拉多大学的Tomi-Ann Roberts,通过亚马逊土耳其机器人调查了近300人(大概是,平均年龄33岁、34岁的美国人)所想到的几十种不同的活动:比如听音乐或看电影这些被动的活动,以及其他的更积极的和潜在诱发心流的活动,比如艺术或冥想。具体而言,参与者评估了他们认为这些活动有多快乐、努力或令人畏惧,同时评估了他们在标准的一周时间内参与每一项运动的频率。同时,参与者确认了他们所认为的最有利/不利于持久的There was a clear pattern in the participants’ answers: they identified more effortful activities as being more associated with lasting happiness, yet they said they spent much more time on passive, relaxation-based activities, like watching TV. Looking at their other judgments, the key factor that seemed to deter participants from engaging in more active, flow-inducing activities is that they tended to be seen as particularly daunting and less enjoyable, even while being associated with lasting happiness. The more daunting an activity was deemed to be, the less frequently it was undertaken (by contrast, and to the researchers’ surprise, the perceived effort involved in the activity did not seem to be a deterrent).