Progressing the construct of enjoyment: conceptualizing enjoyment as a proactive process

Enjoyment is an important psychological construct in many life domains. Despite the importance of the construct, conceptual clarity in what enjoyment is remains elusive. The elusive understanding of enjoyment is probably caused by conceptual ambiguity of the construct and a confusion in the public usage between hedonic and eudaimonic qualities of positive feelings. The hedonic quality of positive feelings (e.g., fun) reflects the simple attainment of desires; whereas the eudaimonic quality of positive feelings (e.g., joy) reflects fulfilling or realizing one’s true nature through full functioning of one’s ability. To better understand this important construct of enjoyment, we conducted a focused review of relevant literature. In the first section, relevant literature was reviewed to identify conceptual ambiguities contributing to why enjoyment has remained an elusive construct in research. In the second section, an operational conceptualization of enjoyment was proposed from integrative perspectives to overcome the identified issues. We proposed operationally conceptualizing enjoyment as a proactive behavioral and psychological process towards the eudaimonic or hedonic qualities of positive feelings. In this process, the individual appraises the situation in a positive way and commits oneself to savoring the situation and engaging in the task to have positive feelings of joy and fun. We explained why the operational conceptualization is important and useful from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives. In doing so, we also proposed possible future research directions with the operational conceptualization of enjoyment.