Abstract
Happiness is typically reported as an important reason for participating in challenging activities like extreme sport. While in the middle of the activity, however, participants do not seem particularly happy. So where does the happiness come from? The article proposes some answers from a study of facially expressed emotions measured moment-by-moment during a backcountry skiing event. Self-reported emotions were also assessed immediately after the skiing. Participants expressed lower levels of happiness while skiing, compared to when stopping for a break. Moment-to-moment and self-reported measures of emotions were largely unrelated. These findings are explained with reference to the Functional Wellbeing Approach (Vittersø, 2013), which argues that some moment-to-moment feelings are non-evaluative in the sense of being generated directly by the difficulty of an activity. By contrast, retrospective emotional feelings are more complex as they include an evaluation of the overall goals and values associated with the activity as a whole.
Highlights
We engage in recreational activities in order to feel good
What exactly is it that feels so good about these vigorous and exhausting activities, often referred to as extreme sport? To explore this question, we developed a new way of measuring emotions in real time during the activity
These films were analyzed with software for automatic coding of facial expressions and compared the participants self-reported emotions assessed in retrospect
Summary
We engage in recreational activities in order to feel good. This pursuit is not restricted to leisure activities like sunbathing at the beach or enjoying a fine meal with friends and family. We equipped the participants with a camera that captured their facially expressed emotion while skiing. These films were analyzed with software for automatic coding of facial expressions and compared the participants self-reported emotions assessed in retrospect. This approach enabled us to explore long standing questions as to how such positive experiences are created. Are they a result of a series of online positive feelings? Or is it the impact of a few central features like intensity peaks, rapid emotional changes, and happy endings that create them? Is it the experience of flow? Or is it the feeling of mastery that kicks in only after the activity has been successfully accomplished?
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