Abstract
When extreme sport athletes explain the engagement behind their taxing and risky endeavors, they often refer to the happiness generated by the activities. However, during the activity, these athletes seem neither pleased nor happy. This article proposes some answers from a study of facially expressed emotions measured moment by moment during downhill mountain biking. Self-reported emotions were also assessed immediately after the trip was over. The participants display less happiness during the activity than before and after the activity. No significant associations between facially expressed and self-reported emotions were observed. Findings are discussed with reference to the functional well-being approach arguing that some momentary feelings are non-evaluative in the sense of being caused by the difficulty of the ongoing activity. Within this framework, easy tasks produce happy feelings while difficult tasks produce interest—regardless of whether a goal has been reached or not. By contrast, retrospective emotions involve the evaluation of the activity in relation to its goal. When a goal is accomplished, the accompanying feeling is positive. If a goal (or value) is threatened, lost, or not achieved, negative feelings follow.
Highlights
When BASE jumper Ryan Saunders landed successfully after a challenging jump, he celebrated the achievement with a verbal eruption that lasted over 60 s: “Yes! Yes! F...ing yes! I don’t care if I sound like the biggest retard in the world – that was f...ing awesome!” (NRK, 2011)
The functional wellbeing approach (FWA; Vittersø, 2013, 2016, 2018) argues that positive feelings are present during flow, but that they are not experienced as pleasure or happiness but rather emotions like interest, immersion, and engagement
The measures of facially expressed emotions were divided into three different events of variable duration: before, during, and after the downhill ride
Summary
When BASE jumper Ryan Saunders landed successfully after a challenging jump, he celebrated the achievement with a verbal eruption that lasted over 60 s: “Yes! Yes! F...ing yes! I don’t care if I sound like the biggest retard in the world – that was f...ing awesome!” (NRK, 2011). Flow theory (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1999) argues that these positive feelings only appear after the activity has ended (Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). The functional wellbeing approach (FWA; Vittersø, 2013, 2016, 2018) argues that positive feelings are present during flow, but that they are not experienced as pleasure or happiness but rather emotions like interest, immersion, and engagement. Following this theory, the feeling of happiness comes later, as the result of an appraisal of goal accomplishment
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