Flow emerges when challenge and skill are balanced, producing deep focus and absorption.

Animals demonstrate persistence, problem-solving, play, cooperation, and intrinsic motivation.

Human-centered inquiry methods may underestimate the complexity of nonhuman animal experience.

In 2005, Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi interviewed rock climbers, chess players, athletes, and artists, investigating why people choose to perform demanding, time-consuming tasks that offer no extrinsic rewards. We now know that people actively seek out experiences that induce flow. Flow is the intensely satisfying state that comes of becoming fully engrossed, energized, and focused on a challenging activity requiring high motivation and increased concentration (Csikszentmihályi, 1975). It is the complete absorption that can come on when the demands of an engaging activity are slightly beyond one’s current skill level. If the activity is too difficult, it produces anxiety, and if too slight, it can elicit boredom. But when there is a balanced dynamic between skill and challenge, an optimal flow experience emerges where attention narrows, time distorts, and distractions fade away. People who experience flow frequently report more joy and greater life satisfaction (Isham & Jackson, 2022).

It is interesting to note that flow has been advanced as being distinct from immersion. For example, watching a gripping movie or reading a riveting novel has been described as leading to genuine absorption but not flow, because the challenge-skill feedback loop is absent. However, there is considerable overlap between the concepts of immersion, flow, and presence (i.e., the sense of “being there”), and empirically, the distinctness has not been fully demonstrated (Michailidis, Balaguer-Ballester, & He, 2018). Further, while some physiological measures have been explored, the findings have been inconsistent. Flow remains primarily measured by self-report inventories, which are inherently filtered through perception and are thus vulnerable to bias. This muddiness........

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