A Closer Look at the Challenge-Skills Relationship and its Effect in the Flow Experience: An Intra- and Inter- Participant Analysis

Abstract

A debate has taken place on the relationship between challenge and skills as the universal precondition of flow. Flow’s precursor, Csikszentmihalyi, states that these two constructs are independent, while other scholars state the opposite. This research aims to better understand this relationship and explore its effect on the flow experience. As flow is considered a nonergodic and nonlinear process, we will base our analysis on an intra-individual level and then shift to an inter-individual level. The database consisted of 3,630 registers collected from a sample of 60 employees. At an intra-individual level, we observed the nature of the challenge- skills relationship classifying the participants according to the direction of these relationships (positive, negative, or nonsignificant correlation). At the inter-individual level, we explored the effect that the three groups had on the flow experience. We also examined nonlinear relationships (cusp modeling) among challenge, skills, and flow. The results showed that the challenge-skills relationship is not homogeneous between individuals. Flow theory is represented by the positive correlation group, but this pattern is the least frequent (21,6% of the cases) in our sample. Finally, the results showed that the nonlinear models fit the data better (R2 nonlinear = .48, R2 linear = .35, p < .01).