Chapter 4
Leisure as a Psychological State
and Experience
(將休閒視為心理狀況和體驗)
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Studying Leisure States and Experiences:
A “Mind” or a “Mine” Field?
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Forewords
 To understand the impact of leisure on health,
well-being, and other domains of daily life, the
researchers not only have to be able to assess
what people do in their leisure but also how
they construe and feel about what they do.
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Three Questions
 First, what is the actual nature of the experience that
accompanies participation? That is, what are the
participants feeling and thinking during an episode and
how can researchers observe and measure the texture
and quality of their experience?
 Second, is the involvement construed as leisure by the
participant, or does an observer of the incident only
think they are experiencing leisure?
 Third, what satisfactions are derived from this activity,
setting or experience?
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Three Strategies for Measuring
Leisure Experiences
 The immediate conscious experience approach (立
即知覺體驗法) involves monitoring the actual, onsite, real time nature of experiences accompanying
engagement in leisure activities or settings.
 The definitional approach (定義法) focuses on the
criteria used by participant in judging or construing
activities, settings, or experiences to be leisure.
 The post-hoc satisfaction approach (事後滿意法)
deals with the satisfactions associated with the
experience based on the extent to which the needs
and expectations of the participants are met by
involvement in the activity, setting, or by the
experience itself.
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Immediate Conscious Experience
Approach: The Texture of Leisure
(立即感受體驗方法: 休閒的本質 )
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Properties of a leisure Experience
(休閒體驗的特性)
 Immediate conscious experience (立即感受體
驗) is the experience of the present moment.
 The stream of consciousness (感覺的湧現)
can be described as “the flow of perception,
purposeful thoughts, fragmentary images,
distant recollections, bodily sensations,
emotions, plans, wishes, and impossible
fantasies…it is our experience of life, our own
personal life, from its beginning to its end”
(Pope & Singer, 1978).
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Properties of a leisure Experience
(cont’)
 See table 4.1 (p. 84-85)
 Emotions, moods, arousal, activation, relaxation,
cognitions, time duration, concentration, focus
of attention, absorption, self-consciousness,
self-awareness, ego-loss, sense of competence,
sense of freedom
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Good or Optimal Leisure Experiences
(好或最佳體驗)
 Good leisure experiences may better contribute
to well-being and happiness.
 What is a good leisure experience? Is it
characterized by higher positive moods,
greater intensity or a relaxed feeling, the
experience of time going quickly or slowly,
greater absorption, lesser or greater selfconscious, or other criteria?
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Good or Optimal Leisure Experiences
(cont’)
 de Grazia’s (1964) view of leisure as a special
state of being. He argued that the possession of
free time, or participation in a recreational
activity is no guarantee that one will
experience leisure.
 Cohen (1979) suggests that profound leisure
experience are hard to realize for all but a
special few.
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Leisure and free time live in two different
worlds. Anybody can have free time. Not
everybody can have leisure. Leisure refers
to a state of being, a condition of man,
which few desire and fewer achieve.
(de Grazia, 1964)
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Good or Optimal Leisure Experiences
(cont’)
 Though
what constitutes a legitimate leisure
experience (適當休閒體驗) is debatable, the view that
leisure leads to an optimal experience (最佳體驗) has
been a prevalent theme in theory and research during
the past decade.
 Optimal experience are states of high psychological
involvement or absorption (全神貫注) in activities or
setting.
 Maslow’s (1968) notion of peak experience (高峰體
驗) and Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow have been
particularly attractive conceptualizations for leisure
researchers.
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Good or Optimal Leisure Experiences
(cont’)
 Maslow (1968) describes peak experiences as
“moment of highest happiness and fulfillment (滿
足 感 )” often achieved through the nature
experience, aesthetic perception, creative
movement, intellectual insight, organismic
experience, athletic pursuit, and the like.
 Csikszentmihalyi suggested that flow is the
experience individuals frequently seek in their
various activities and that leisure and play
activities and settings can be excellent sources of
flow.
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Good or Optimal Leisure Experiences
(cont’)
 Involvement in leisure activities and settings does
not guarantee flow will be experienced. The correct
choices must be made and certain conditions must be
present in the activity or setting.
 Csikszentmihalyi (1990) suggested that flow
experiences are “the best moments of people lives”
and “occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched
to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish
something difficult and worthwhile ”.
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Csikszentmihaly’s Flow Model
(p. 89)
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Good or Optimal Leisure Experiences
(cont’)
 One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the
same level for long. People grow bored or
frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy themselves
again pushes them to stretch their skills, or to
discover new opportunities for using them.
 Flow model allows for the recognition that the
experience does not have to “all-or-nothing” and
that the degree of flow can vary from modest
involvement to intense peak-like involvement.
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On-Site Surveys of Moods: Leisure In Outdoor
Areas and Other Settings (情緒的現場調查)
 Multi-phase experience (各期間的體驗):
 1.anticipation (期待)—a period of imagining and




planning the trip;
2.travel to (去程)—going to the recreation site;
3.on-site (現場)—the actual activity or experience
at the site;
4.travel back (回程)—the return trip home;
5.recollection (回憶)—the recall or memory of
the activity or experience.
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Moods During a Visit to a Park
 See figure 4.2 (p.93)
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On-Site Surveys of Moods: Leisure In
Outdoor Areas and Other Settings (cont’)
 Hammit (1980) points out that there is a need
to consider many recreation engagement as a
“package deal; all parts having a potential
role…”.
 Depending on the length or nature of the
leisure activity—for example, vacations and
going to the movies would be quite differentthe various phase may take on greater or lesser
importance in influencing the leisure
experience.
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Experiments: Leisure Experience
in the Lab
 For the example, see figure 4.3-4.5 (p. 95-
99)
 This study demonstrates that perceiving a
leisure activity as freely chosen has a strong
influences on the quality of the resulting
experience, here defined as the level of flow.
 The more competitive conditions in this
experiment also caused the participants to
become more involved.
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Experiential Sampling Method (體驗取樣法):
Experiencing Leisure in Life
 Experiential sampling method is used to monitor not
only what people do during their everyday lives, but
to measure the psychological states and experiences
that accompany this daily activity.
 Also, this method is used to uncover the regularities
in perceptions and feelings of happiness, selfawareness, concentration, and other characteristics of
conscious experience in various settings including
work and leisure.
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Experiential Sampling Method:
Experiencing Leisure in Life (cont’)
 Typically, respondents carry electronic pagers
with them and are randomly signaled seven to
nine times throughout the day for a period of one
week.
 Each time, the pager emits a signal, the
respondents take out a booklet of brief
questionnaires (experiential sampling forms, or
ESF) and complete a series of open- and closeended items indicating their current activity, the
social and physical context of their activity, and
their psychological state.
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Experiential Sampling Form (ESF)
 See figure 4.6-4.8 (p. 102-105)
 Leisure activities had only slightly higher levels of
concentration and perceived challenge than
maintenance activities and considerably lower levels
than productive activities.
 The researchers point out that these findings are
consistent with the view that leisure is relaxing, but it
also suggests that the leisure activities of adolescents
rarely require much in terms of effort and attention or
what might be called flow.
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Definitional Approach: Leisure in
the Eye of the Beholder
(當事者眼中的休閒)
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Criteria Necessary for Something To Be
Construed as Leisure (推斷為休閒的必要條件)
 The definitional approach to the study of the
leisure experience is characterized by theory and
research which attempt to identify the attributes
or properties of an activity, setting or experience
that lead people to construe it as leisure.
 First, the most central and commonly agreed
upon set of attributes is associated with freedom
(自由) or a lack of constraints (沒有阻礙).
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Criteria Necessary for Something To
Be Construed as Leisure (cont’)
 Second,
activities, settings, and experiences
construed as leisure are likely to be perceived as
providing opportunities for the development of
competence, self-expression, self-development, or
self-realization.
 Third, this set of attributes is based on the nature
and quality of experience derived from
participation. When an engagement is experienced
as enjoyable, relaxed, escaped, adventurous,
spontaneous, fantastic, fun or pleasurable, it is
more likely to be construed as leisure.
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Qualitative Approaches: Participants
Talk about Leisure
 The
most common attributes are: a sense of
separation from the everyday world; freedom of
choice in one’s actions; a feeling of pleasure;
spontaneity; timeless; fantasy; a sense of adventure
and exploration; and self-realization (Gunter, 1987).
 Henderson (1990) found that old women, who had
worked hard all their lives, typically found leisurelike experiences in their work and family obligations
even though the women saw themselves as having
had little or no leisure.
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Qualitative Approaches: Participants
Talk about Leisure (cont’)
 Shaw
(1984) found that leisure were
characterized by the perception that the
activities had been freely chosen and intrinsic
motivated.
 She also found that feelings of enjoyment,
relaxation, and a lack of evaluation by other
people were associated with those activities
her respondents construed as leisure.
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Quasi-Experiment: Imagining Leisure
 Iso-Ahola (1979) used a quasi-experimental
design (準實驗設計) and had the participants
imagine themselves engaging in a recreational
activity during their free time.
 Iso-Ahola indicated that the perception of
leisure was significantly greater when
perceived freedom was high than when it was
low, when participation was intrinsically rather
than extrinsically motivated, and when the
leisure activity was unrelated rather than
related to work.
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Experiential Sampling Method:
You Call It-- “Leisure or Nonleisure”
 Samdahl
(1988) demonstrated that when
people perceived that they had chosen to
participate in an activity independently of the
expectations of other people (low role
constraint) and they were more likely to
construe and rate the activity or situation as
“leisure” and experience positive moods.
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Experiential Sampling Method: You Call
It-- “Leisure or Nonleisure” (cont’)
 Samdhal and Jekubivich (1993) contended
that “leisure was not left to chance”(休閒非偶然
發生). Leisure was found to be important to
many people, and positive leisure experiences
occurred as a result of active negotiation (主動
克服) and interaction (互動) with the social
contexts that comprised their daily lives.
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A Final Note on the Subjective Nature of
Leisure
 Perceived freedom and intrinsic motivation
seem to be extremely important to human
mental and physical health, and they also just
happen to be at the core of what people see as
leisure (休閒的核心精髓).
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The End...
Thank You!
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