Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure

Meanings, Motives and Lifelong Learning

Sam Elkington, Sean Gammon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134119493
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

We are entering a new era of leisure. Quality rather than quantity is now the focus of researchers, policymakers and managers. Technological change, an ageing population and a harsh economic climate are changing the values and practices of leisure, as well as the relationship between leisure, society and the individual.

Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure uses a variety of disciplinary approaches to introduce the most important trends in contemporary leisure in the Twenty-First Century. With contributions from some of the leading international figures in modern leisure studies, the book examines key philosophical and theoretical debates around leisure, with reference to concepts such as happiness, enjoyment and quality of life, as well as the most interesting contemporary themes in leisure studies, from youth leisure and 'dark' leisure to technology and adventure.

Understanding changes in leisure helps us to better understand changes in wider society. Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure is a perfect companion to any course in leisure studies, and useful reading for any student or scholar working in sociology, cultural studies, recreation, tourism, sport, or social psychology.

Part I

Meanings

1

Leisure in the Laboratory and Other Strange Notions

Psychological research on the subjective nature of leisure

Roger C. Mannell

In 1977 while finishing breakfast in the Las Vegas hotel where I was attending a research conference, I was suddenly assailed by an idea that I hurriedly transcribed on a close-at-hand piece of paper – the back of a Keno card. The recent recipient of a PhD in experimental social psychology, and newly appointed director of something called a Centre of Leisure Studies, I had been struggling to give form to an idea on which to base a research program on the psychology of leisure. The idea eventually led to the development of an experimental paradigm that provided a framework for a number of experiments that I and a succession of my graduate students completed over the next twenty years – experiments in which we examined the subjective nature of leisure (e.g., Bradley and Mannell, 1984; Mannell, 1979; Mannell and Bradley, 1986; Iwasaki and Mannell, 1999). Although I went on to study leisure experiences outside of the laboratory with colleagues using other methods such as the field experiment (e.g., Backman and Mannell, 1986) and signal-contingent sampling (e.g., Mannell, Zuzanek and Larson, 1988; Zuzanek and Mannell, 1993), these early ‘experiments in leisure’ provided me with some of my most interesting challenges and convinced me that the subjective nature of leisure is amenable to empirical scrutiny by psychological science.

In this chapter, I will examine the emergence as well as continued development of different approaches to ‘psychologizing‘ and empirically studying leisure as a subjective phenomenon. In the mid-to late 1970s, along with a few other like-minded scholars scattered around North America and Britain, I began to use psychological theory and methods to study and analyze the subjective nature of leisure, that is, treat it as an empirical phenomenon as opposed to a philosophical ideal. These early efforts to use psychological perspectives to conceptualize and measure the subjective nature of leisure were an important impetus for developing the psychology of leisure as a field of study (Mannell et al., 2006). Of course, empirical research on what exists only in the experiencer’s mind rather than the external world is challenging and I have often joked that working in this leisure ‘mind field‘ is akin to working in a ‘mine field‘ (Mannell and Iso-Ahola, 1987). However, at the time of my initial experimental forays, I was well aware that social psychologists had had good success studying a variety of seemingly difficult-to-define and measure subjective phenomena experimentally in the laboratory such as the experience of time (e.g., Ornstein, 1969) and emotion (e.g., Schachter and Singer, 1962). In fact, social psychologists have continued to use laboratory experiments to study subjective phenomena that are as difficult as leisure to pin down. For example, recently Haidt and his colleagues have reported a number of successful experiments on the subjective phenomenon of ‘moral elevation,’ a state that individuals sometimes experience after they witness or hear about a virtuous act (Algoe and Haidt, 2009).

With respect to my own psychological experiments on the subjective nature of leisure, I was influenced by several leisure researchers who at the time were themselves advocating the use of experiments (Bishop and Witt, 1970; Neulinger, 1974). Although Bishop and Witt did not study leisure states, they carried out an experiment in which they asked research participants to imagine themselves in different sets of circumstances and then to choose the leisure activities in which they would prefer to participate. Neulinger’s 1974 book, The Psychology of Leisure, was also very influential. The book was ground breaking in identifying a number of personality and social psychological theories that potentially could be used to explain leisure as objective and subjective phenomena. Neulinger also psychologized the concept of leisure by providing a definition based on the concepts of perceived freedom and intrinsic motivation – psychological ideas that continue to be critical for psychologists in understanding human behavior.

Another significant influence on the development of my experimental approach for studying leisure experiences in the laboratory was Csikszentimhalyi’s recently published book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Flow in Work and Play (1975). On the basis of extensive interviews with people engaged in their best leisure (i.e., rock climbers, basketball players, recreational dancers, chess players), he developed his flow model, which provided insight into how the activities of everyday life come to be invested with meaning and experienced as optimal. His insightful analysis identified the key conditions and characteristics of these intensely absorbing and rewarding experiences, which include the presence of challenges that match participant skills, clear performance feedback, loss of a sense of time and awareness of self, and positive affect. My ‘Las Vegas’ insight involved some ideas on the ways in which flow could be operationalized and measured in the laboratory.

Experimental paradigms: a case for studying leisure experiences in the lab?

My early efforts to develop an experimental paradigm to study leisure experience in the laboratory were in part to demonstrate that leisure as a subjective phenomenon is amenable to even the most rigorous research methods used by psychologists. Experimental paradigms in psychology are tools created and used to study specific phenomena, that is, they are a standard set of procedures and arrangements (Meiser, 2011). I eventually used my experimental paradigm in a number of laboratory experiments to create or simulate a period of free time in which a game is played. This paradigm made it possible to create a laboratory environment in which I could: (1) engineer a period of ‘free time’ during the course of the experiment that the participants would perceive, at least within certain limits, was their own time and separate from the ‘obligatory’ activities under study; (2) manipulate a variety of independent variables, that is, vary the situational and personality characteristics of the participants; (3) hold constant all other features of the physical and social environment for all participants in the study; (4) measure the dependent variables used to operationalize the type of leisure experience of interest; and (5) disguise the purpose of the experiment so that the participants would behave as naturally as possible (Mannell, 1980).

In the first experiment using the paradigm (Mannell, 1979), the amount of freedom participants had in choosing a game to play during the ‘free time’ period and the competitiveness of the game were the independent variables that were manipulated. As predicted, participants who had greater freedom of choice and who played more competitive games experienced higher levels of flow than participants who were in low choice and low competitive conditions. The participants, who were university students, were randomly assigned to one of the four possible conditions, that is, low choice/low competition, low choice/high competition, high choice/low competition and high choice/high competition. The two-room laboratory was furnished to look like it had a testing and a waiting room. The ‘waiting room’ was furnished with comfortable furniture, curtains, rugs, magazines, and pictures and posters adorning the walls. Every effort was made to have the participants feel that what happened in this waiting or ‘free time’ period had nothing to do with the actual purpose of the experiment, which from their perspective was a learning task being carried out in the ‘testing’ room. All participants played the same game for thirty minutes. The manipulations led them to believe they had a little or very much choice about which game they played, and that the game was either not competitive or moderately competitive.

Of course, another critical feature of this experimental paradigm was that it allowed the measurement of flow as an indicator of optimal leisure experience. In the experiment, three features of flow were operationalized and measured. First, perceptions of the time duration of the waiting/free time period were assessed at the end of the waiting period by asking the participants to rate their perceptions of the length of waiting period – they had removed their watches for the ‘testing’ portion of the experiment. High levels of flow are associated with the experience of time passing quickly (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). The second measure of flow was the participants’ focus of attention on the game rather than themselves or their surroundings. Focus of attention was measured with a memory test consisting of multiple choice questions that assessed the participants’ memories of the features of the game room environment. It was assumed that the less the study participant remembered about the waiting room environment, the greater their focus of attention, and consequently flow experienced. The hypotheses were supported and in subsequent experiments freedom of choice and control were always found to have a powerful influence on experiencing flow. Psychological reactance theory was used to explain the importance of freedom in experiencing optimal leisure.

We have reported a number of studies on the factors affecting these ‘immediate conscious experiences’ during leisure operationalized as flow or intrinsic motivation and using this paradigm or variations of it. Personality differences (e.g., locus of control, intrinsic leisure motivation orientation) have been found to interact with the level of choice and control provided participants and to influence levels of optimal experience (Mannell and Bradley, 1986; Iwasaki and Mannell, 1999). In fact, Mannell and Bradley found that in certain situations people who feel they have little control in their lives generally do not experience higher levels of flow when given more choice in leisure activities whereas those who feel they have a great deal of control in their lives do experience greater flow with greater freedom and choice in leisure.

Alternative perspectives on leisure as a subjective phenomenon

Of course, other researchers have developed different ideas about the subjective nature of leisure and ways to study it. Around the time I first became interested in the psychology of leisure, I encountered and later described a ‘leisure’ episode I observed when out one evening with friends in Niagara Falls, Canada not far from my hometown. It has helped me think about these various views of the subjective nature of leisure and the ways they can be studied.

In a combination theme park and shopping mall in Niagara Falls stands a machine looking not unlike a flight simulator. When I first encountered this machine, it periodically spun, bumped and twisted. When it stopped, two people emerged with slightly bemused smiles on their faces. The machine had just dispensed a simulated leisure experience – with accompanying sounds, sights and feelings of disequilibrium. This simulated environment produced an engineered lifelike experience that was advertised to duplicate that of an actual ride on the world’s largest roller coaster located 800 or 900 hundred kilometers distant (Mannell and Iso-Ahola, 1987).

Of course, machine-computer simulated virtual reality environments are now common. Such systems can simulate high fidelity experiences of racing Formula One cars and flying aircraft such as the Harrier Jump Jet. However, the simulated roller coaster ride is still intriguing. It is a leisure experience at several levels. It was designed to provide a simulated leisure experience of an actual leisure experience that, itself, was engineered!

For me, this example provided a useful way of delineating three somewhat overlapping strategies or approaches to the study of leisure as a subjective phenomenon. These include what I have called the ‘post hoc satisfaction,’ ‘definitional’ and ‘immediate conscious experience’ approaches (Mannell and Iso-Ahola, 1987). The roller coaster simulator episode allows the illustration of these strategies and three sets of questions and measurement issues that have drawn the attention of researchers examining the subjective nature of leisure. First, what satisfactions are derived from this leisure episode? Are they distinct from the satisfactions that could be experienced through participation in another type of recreational activity (or in this case the ‘real’ roller coaster ride)? How can these satisfactions be observed and measured? Second, is the simulated roller coaster ride perceived as leisure by the participants? If so, what are the criteria used by the participants to judge the activity, setting or experience to be leisure and how are researchers to observe and measure these criteria? Third, what is the actual nature of the experience that accompanies participation in the simulated roller coaster ride? That is, what are the participants feeling and thinking during an episode and how can researchers observe and measure the texture and quality of these experiences? These three approaches are similar in that leisure is viewed to be most profitably understood by assessing its subjective nature, yet they differ in how they treat or conceptualize this subjectivity.

Typically only one of the three approaches has been used in any one study even though the post hoc satisfaction, definitional and immediate conscious experience approaches are interrelated or overlap. People usually participate in leisure activities and settings to have specific immediate conscious experiences (e.g., feelings of fun, curiosity, awe, competence, relaxation, excitement, freedom, escape, challenge, social connectedness). However, the extent to which these experiences meet people’s needs and expectations is usually an important influence on their post hoc satisfaction with the activity. As well, whether people define or judge the episode to be leisure can be influenced by their actual immediate experience and later post hoc satisfaction. Although in the following discussion we will examine work on leisure as a subjective phenomenon from each of these three perspectives separately, it should be noted that several researchers have used two (Mannell et al., 1988; Samdahl, 1988) and even three of these (Lee et al., 1994) approaches simultaneously. Samdahl used the experience sampling method (ESM), which allowed her study participants to report not only their immediate conscious experiences during their daily activities but rate the extent to which they felt (defined) these activities were leisure. Lee, Dattilo and Howard (1994) examined leisure using all three approaches. Leisure as definitional and post hoc phenomena were assessed using in-depth interviews, while the immediate conscious experience was captured by having study participants tape-record descriptions of their experiences at the time of occurrence.

Post hoc satisfaction – leisure after-the-fact

Assessing the satisfactions derived from participation in leisure activities or settings has been a frequently used approach to getting inside the heads of people and seeing leisure from their perspectives. This approach was the earliest application of psychological theory and thinking to studying the subjective nature of leisure. Driver and Tocher (1970) defined leisure as ‘an experience that results from recreation engagements’ (p. 10) and along with other North American researchers interested in outdoor recreation and management issues attempted to operationalize this ‘experience’ as ‘motivations’ ‘psychological outcomes’, and ‘experience expectations’ (Manning, 1986, p. 80). These concepts are based on the idea of post hoc satisfaction. People learn through experience that participation in certain types of outdoor activities allows them to satisfy their needs or meet their expectations, and consequently experience satisfaction (Mannell, 1999). Among the best-known and tested inventory used to measure these types of expected satisfactions in outdoor recreational activities, where most of this type of research has been conducted, is the Recreation Experience Preference (REP) scales developed by Driver and his colleagues. Scales to assess the needs, motives and satisfactions associated not only in outdoor activities but a wide range of other leisure activities have also been developed (see Driver et al., 1991).

Researchers have been able to successfully measure post hoc satisfaction and a great deal of the early research was carried out based on the assumption that participation in specific types of recreation activities and settings produce specific types of post hoc satisfactions. The assumption is that people have a history of participation in various recreation activities and have learned that they can reliably experience certain satisfactions in specific recreation activities. Consequently, leisure researchers attempted to identify differences in the packages of satisfactions that different types of leisure activities or settings could provide for participants. For example, Manfredo, Driver and Brown (1983) found groups of wilderness users were seeking different ‘packages’ of satisfactions that in turn were related to their preferences for specific recreation environmental settings. Users attempting to satisfy their needs for risk and achievement preferred areas with rough or undeveloped access, rugged terrain and a low probability of meeting other people. Those users looking for solitude but who were not looking for achievement and challenge satisfactions preferred areas with moderate accessibility and lacking dangerous situations, although they also preferred low levels of development and probability of social encounters. A third group preferred more accessible, secure and managed settings where the likelihood of meeting other people was higher. Visitors to the latter environment saw it as providing higher satisfactions for tension release, competence, escape and family togetherness. However, subsequent research has shown that the satisfactions that people experience in recreational activities and settings exist to a large extent in the mind of the participant and not in the activity itself (Driver and Brown, 1984). The same activity can provide different satisfactions depending on the previous experience of the participant and the social and/or physical setting in which it occurs. Also, some satisfactions can be achieved in a wide variety of activities and settings while other satisfactions are highly setting and activity specific (Yuan and McEwen, 1989).

However, understanding the satisfactions people experience and the factors that influence them continues to be an important strategy and area of research for exploring leisure as a subjective phenomenon. Post hoc satisfaction has been measured immediately after completion of a leisure activity while participants are still on-site, when leaving the site or at some future time after the activity is completed. Although post hoc satisfaction is usually assessed only once following participation in a leisure activity, Stewart and Hull (1992) conducted an innovative study that had outdoor recreation participants appraise their...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Meanings
• Part II: Motives
• Part III: Lifelong learning
• Bibliography
• Index