Abstract
High points in life come from those wonderful moments when we are fully involved and not conscious of the time. A profound lecture, a great concert, a thrilling soccer match, or a new lover — all stimulate intense involvement. What are those peak moments like, few as they are, and how do we study them? What do they tell us about the rest of life and how can a teacher use the best ideas to improve his or her practice? For one thing, we call peak moments of involvement “fun.”2 Why do we care? Because we need to explore every setting or task in or out of school that makes people want to learn.
My life is one of low peaks, high valleys, and a continual stream of diverse rewards and enthusiasms; this isn’t Maslow’s ravishing ideal, but it more nearly reflects the life that many of us lead.
—Eric Zencey1
Time flies when you’re having fun.
—Popular saying
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
David LaBerge, Attentional Processing: The Brain’s Art of Mindfulness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
Peter Milner, Physiological Psychology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).
For example, see Robert W. White, “Competence and the Psychosexual Stages of Development,” Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1960)
Richard DeCharms, Personal Causation: The Internal Affective Determinants of Behavior (New York: Academic Press, 1968)
Edward Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (New York: Plenum, 1985)
Julian Rotter, “Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement: A Case History of a Variable,” American Psychologist 45, no. 4 (1990): 489–493.
Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “Promoting Self-determined School Engagement: Motivation, Learning, and Well-Being,” in Handbook of Motivation at School , ed. Kathryn R. Wentzel and Allan Wigfield (New York: Routledge, 2009).
Charles Guignon and Dirk Pereboom, eds., Existentialism: Basic Writings (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1995), 200.
Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).
Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 91–94.
Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1993), 335.
Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), xi.
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). Cited by Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life , 299.
Phillip E. Hammond and David W. Machacek, Soka Gakkai in America: Accommodation and Conversion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Jim Castelli, How I Pray (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994).
See Harvey Cox, The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley, 1994)
Grant Wacker, Heaven Below (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1958).
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987).
For colorful examples of people “going to the edge” in sports, hobbies, war, sex, and pursuits like running with the bulls in Pamplona, see Michael J. Apter, The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
Stephen Lyng, “Edgework: a Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk-taking,” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 4 (1990): 85–86.
Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
Marvin Zuckerman, Sensation Seeking: Beyond the Optimal level of Arousal (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1979).
Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, Driven to Distraction (New York: Touchstone, 1994).
For a compendium of attention-getting devices used in carnivals, see Ricky Jay, Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998).
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (New York: Harper and Row, 1951).
Two business books apply concepts about attention span to industry as well as competition among experience providers: Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy Understanding the New Currency of Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2001)
B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Attention Economy: Work is Theater & Every Business a Stage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 1999).
John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1963). (Original published 1916.) 48.
Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).
Margaret Singer et al., Report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control , 1986. Online at: http://www.rickross.com/
Eugene Galanter, Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
Philip Zimbardo and Michael Leippe, The Psychology of Attitude Change and Influence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991)
Neil Osherow, “Making Sense of the Nonsensical: An Analysis of Jonestown,” in Readings about the Social Animal , ed. Eliot Aronson (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1992), 68–86.
Avishai Margalit, “The Suicide Bombers,” The New York Review 50, no. 1 (January 16, 2003): 36–39.
Zimbardo and Leippe, The Psychology of Attitude Change and Influence ; Eliot Aronson, The Social Animal , eighth ed. (New York: Worth Publishers, 1999).
Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt W. Back, Social Pressure in Informal Groups (New York: Harper, 1950).
Lee Ross, “The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology , vol. 10, ed. Leonard Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 173–220.
David Gutmann, “The Subjective Politics of Power: The Dilemma of Post-superego Man,” Social Research 40, no. 4 (1973): 570–616.
Copyright information
© 2012 Jackson Kytle
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kytle, J. (2012). Psychology of Involvement. In: To Want to Learn. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403973818_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403973818_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-33820-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-7381-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Education CollectionEducation (R0)