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Abstract

Three eudaemonic, positive processes and their outcomes, or products — self-efficacy, self-fulfillment, and identity development — are especially prominent in the serious pursuits. Additionally, a variety of positive emotions cluster around the serious pursuits, one of them being interest. Self-efficacy rests, in part, on self-directed learning and personal agency. Every serious pursuit is carried out within a social world, participation there being in general a richly positive experience. Positive leisure space may be institutional, temporal, or geographic. Serious leisure participants also develop a strong attachment to and identification with the geographic space in which they pursue their core activities. Some serious leisure participants also develop a strong attachment to and identification with the space in which they use their bodies to pursue their core activities. That is, body form or functioning if not both, is seen as crucial and may become a condition of pride and fulfillment.

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© 2015 Robert A. Stebbins

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Stebbins, R.A. (2015). Positiveness in the Serious Pursuits. In: Leisure and Positive Psychology: Linking Activities with Positiveness. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56994-3_3

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