RESEARCH STARTER

Peak experiences

Peak experiences are profound moments marked by feelings of wonder, awe, and ecstasy, during which individuals often report a sense of unity with the world and a transformation in their emotional state. Coined by psychologist Abraham Maslow in the 1970s, the term reflects his exploration of self-actualized individuals—those who have realized their full potential and frequently encounter such intense experiences. These moments can feel spiritual, although not necessarily tied to religious beliefs, and are often associated with positive changes in a person's outlook on life and their relationships with others.

Maslow distinguished peak experiences from "plateau experiences," which are more serene and consistent, particularly as individuals age. The situations that facilitate peak experiences can vary widely, typically including activities like being in nature, engaging in music, or connecting with loved ones. Cultural context also plays a significant role in shaping how these experiences are perceived and described, with different cultures emphasizing varying aspects of emotional intensity.

Related to peak experiences is the concept of "flow," introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which describes a state of deep engagement in challenging activities. While peak experiences and flow share similarities, they are not identical; peak experiences are often characterized by a sense of fulfillment, significance, and spirituality. Understanding these experiences can provide insights into human motivation, emotional well-being, and the potential for personal growth.

Full Article

  • TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Cognitive/emotional; Cross-cultural; Developmental; Religion; Psychology

Abraham Maslow called the mystical experiences of awe and absorption regularly described by self-actualized people “peak experiences.” Subsequent research has found that the quality of peak experiences may vary by age and culture. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the related concept of the experience of “flow,” which can occur when one is fully engaged in an activity.

Introduction

By the middle of twentieth century , Abraham Maslow developed a humanistic theory of personality and motivation to describe people's positive potential, in contrast to many other psychological theories that focused on people's struggles and failings. Peak experience is a term coined by Maslow to describe a characteristic experience of people who were, in his view, self-actualized—fulfilling their human potential. These people reported experiences of wonder, awe, and ecstasy, in which their sense of individuality became absorbed in the world. The descriptions were of a decidedly spiritual, although not necessarily religious, nature. Maslow investigated these experiences through studying the lives of people who he felt were self-actualized, and through interviewing everyday people on their emotionally positive experiences.

In the late twentieth century, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researched a similar concept he termed “flow.” Like peak experiences, flow is a state of absorption that arises when one is engaged in activities that challenge one to use the full extent of their skills. The result can be a positive emotion in which the person “becomes one” with the activity. While peak experiences and flow are not equivalent concepts, they overlap considerably and are regularly investigated in conjunction.

The Nature and Effect of Peak Experiences

To understand the nature of peak experiences, Maslow asked people to describe the most emotionally powerful experience in their lives. He found that people often described such experiences in mystical or spiritual terms. People described feeling intense happiness and integrated with the world. In Religion, Values and Peak Experience, Maslow describes peak experiences as “Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences.”

Not all peak experiences are as intense as described above, but often, people feel changed by them. In the interviews Maslow conducted, people reported trying to repeat such experiences, feeling more compassionate toward others and more accepting and comfortable in the world than they had felt before the experience.

Peak Experiences in the Context of Maslow's Theory of Motivation

Maslow's humanistic theory of personality and motivation sought to describe the positive potential of people. Maslow described people as having B-needs and D-needs. These are hierarchically arranged, often pictured as a pyramid, with the D-needs, D is an abbreviation for deficiency, forming the large pyramidal base. D-needs include physiological needs such as food and sleep, safety needs such as security, love and belonging needs such as friendship, and esteem needs such as confidence and the respect of others. Once these needs are fulfilled to a reasonable level, one can develop B-needs. B is an abbreviation for being. These are the needs associated with self-actualization and living to one's full potential. B-needs include justice, morality, and clear, realistic perception.

Maslow came to his description of self-actualization by examining the lives of historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as friends and acquaintances that he felt were examples of self-actualized or fully functioning people. He looked for commonalities among these people to describe the nature of self-actualization. Maslow concluded that self-actualized people have several characteristics in common, including self-acceptance, realism, autonomy, spontaneity, democratic attitudes, and a need for solitude and privacy.

Maslow found that the people he described as self-actualized described peak experiences much more frequently than people who were not self-actualized, although he noted that almost all people experienced at least some peak experiences in their lifetimes. In interviews, he did find some people, who he called “non-peakers,” who claimed to never have had a peak experience. These people, he said, were overly cognitive, non-emotional, and overly controlled.

Maslow was not the only humanistic psychologist who described the nature of self-actualization. American psychologist and one of the founders of humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers, used the term actualizing tendency to describe what he saw as the innate tendency of the person to fulfill their potential. Rogers's focus was on how, in therapeutic relationships, this innate tendency could be fostered in the service of healing, while Maslow did not describe a therapeutic process. Maslow and Rogers described the self-actualized person in similar terms, but Rogers did not include peak experiences in his description. Perhaps most importantly, Rogers argued that all individuals strive for self-actualization, although this tendency for actualization can be thwarted under harsh circumstances. Maslow, in contrast, believed very few people, perhaps as little as 2 percent of the population, attained self-actualization.

Maslow's investigations led him to conclude that peak experiences may vary with age. The college-age students he interviewed were more likely to describe emotionally intense experiences than were older individuals. Older individuals were more likely to describe their most positive experiences in terms of serenity rather than intense ecstasy. Maslow termed these “plateau experiences,” in contrast with peak experiences. He found that these sorts of serene experiences were more consistent than intense peak experiences, which could be relatively rare. In the later part of Maslow's life, he began to investigate how practicing meditation might help one achieve and sustain plateau experiences.

The situations that evoke peak experiences vary from person to person, and perhaps from culture to culture. In general, however, being in nature, hearing or performing music, or being with loved ones are commonly cited as situations in which peak experiences are more likely to be experienced. These situations seem to encourage the emotional openness that may be a prerequisite for a peak experience. For some people, ingesting hallucinogenic drugs may also induce peak experiences.

Peak experiences may also vary by culture. Maslow himself did not study cultural differences, but psychologist Gayle Privette researched them. Privette found that cultures might vary in the way they describe their most significant experiences. Chinese people, for example, describe experiencing more serenity than vivid joy in terms of their peak experiences. Portuguese students reported peak experiences related to developmental milestones more than Chinese students. Much cross-cultural investigation remained to be done.

Research on peak experiences

By their nature, peak experiences are difficult to replicate in controlled experimentation in laboratory settings; interviews, questionnaires, and narrative analyses have historically formed the body of research on this topic. Maslow examined historical or archival records of people he felt were self-actualized, and conducted interviews with those he had access to. He also interviewed college students on their peak experiences. His mode of investigation has been criticized for being too open-ended and unsystematic. Such methods can provide a rich description but may lack generality.

To address these limitations, later researchers developed standardized psychometric instruments to quantify and compare peak experiences across broader populations. Privette developed the Experience Questionnaire (EQ) to study the nature of peak experiences. From research using the EQ, three characteristics were found to signify peak experiences: Fulfillment, referring to the intrinsically rewarding nature of peak experiences; Significance, referring to the personal importance or life-altering nature of the event; and Spirituality, referring to the absorption of the self into the experience and the sense of unity or transcendence. The EQ has been adapted to suit cross-cultural research and diverse contexts, including educational settings, psychotherapy, and organizational psychology. Researchers have translated and validated the EQ in multiple languages to assess whether these core components of peak experiences hold across different cultural frameworks. Some studies have even used the EQ to examine peak experiences in religious rituals, music performance, and athletic competition.

Eugene Mathes and collaborators also examined peak experiences as measured by questionnaires called the Peak Scale and the Absorption Scale, which aimed to quantify the mystical or transcendent aspects of peak experiences, particularly among college students. The Absorption Scale has been used and adapted to assess an individual's general tendency toward immersive and deeply engaging experiences—traits that predict the likelihood of encountering peak states. Other adaptations of this scale have included online environments, with researchers exploring how digital immersion (such as in gaming or virtual reality) might elicit absorption akin to that seen in traditional peak experiences.

In the early twenty-first century, neuroscience research began highlighting the physiological correlates of peak and transcendent experiences. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans and electroencephalogram (EEG) technologies investigated brain activity during states of deep meditation, flow, and mystical absorption. One consistent finding has been the suppression of the Default Mode Network (DMN)—a network associated with self-referential thinking—during such experiences. This deactivation is thought to underlie the temporary loss of ego or sense of self often described during peak states. Andrew Newberg’s work in neurotheology further explored how intense spiritual experiences correspond with specific patterns of brain activation in the frontal lobes and parietal regions (involved in attention, self-awareness, and spatial orientation).

The concept of “flow,” described and researched by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has several characteristics in common with peak experiences, and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. However, although they share some qualities, flow and peak experiences do not seem to be identical experiences. Flow refers to the state of pleasurable absorption that can occur when one is engaged in an activity that challenges but does not exceed one's level of skill. Flow experiences generally occur when a task has clear goals and feedback. Like peak experiences in general, one's sense of self may not be distinct in flow experiences, they are emotionally positive, and one may lose a sense of time during both. Csikszentmihalyi described meditative states as experiences of flow, but most theorizing and research on flow concerns activities such as sports and creative endeavors. Sometimes, the term “peak performance” is used to describe the quality of the outcomes that may occur as a result of activities performed in flow.

Privette clarified the theoretical distinctions described above and found support for them in the descriptions of the experiences of college students. As mentioned above, peak experiences were distinguished by their fulfillment, significance, and spirituality. Peak performance was characterized by the intensity of the focus on the transaction of the self with the environment. Flow was characterized by a sense of play.


Bibliography

“Actualizing Tendency.” Torbay Psychotherapy, 23 Apr. 2022, www.torbaypsychotherapy.com/article/actualizing-tendency. Accessed 28 Mar. 2026.

Cherry, Kendra. "Peak Experiences in Psychology." Verywell Mind, 11 Aug. 2025, www.verywellmind.com/what-are-peak-experiences-2795268. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.

Compton, William C., and Edward Hoffman. Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Flourishing. 4th ed., Sage Publications, 2023.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row, 1990.

Hoffman, Edward. “Maslow, Peak Experiences, and the Body.” Psychology Today, 29 Mar. 2024, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-peak-experience/202403/maslow-peak-experiences-and-the-body. Accessed 28 Mar. 2026.

Jeffrey, Scott. “Peak Experience: A Definitive Guide with Insights from Maslow & Others.” CEO Sage, 25 Aug. 2025, scottjeffrey.com/maslow-peak-experience. Accessed 28 Mar. 2026.

Maslow, Abraham H. Toward a Psychology of Being. 2nd ed., Van Nostrand, 1968.

Maslow, Abraham H. Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. Viking Press, 1970.

Newberg, Andrew B., and Daniel A. Monti. Brain Weaver: Creating the Fabric for a Healthy Mind Through Integrative Medicine. Kales Press in association with the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, 2021.

Privette, Gayle. “Defining Moments of Self-Actualization.” The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology: Leading Edges in Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Kirk J. Schneider, et al., Sage Publications, 2001, pp. 161–80.

Wilson, C. Super Consciousness: The Quest for the Peak Experience. Watkins, 2009.

Full Article

  • TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Cognitive/emotional; Cross-cultural; Developmental; Religion; Psychology

Abraham Maslow called the mystical experiences of awe and absorption regularly described by self-actualized people “peak experiences.” Subsequent research has found that the quality of peak experiences may vary by age and culture. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the related concept of the experience of “flow,” which can occur when one is fully engaged in an activity.

Introduction

By the middle of twentieth century , Abraham Maslow developed a humanistic theory of personality and motivation to describe people's positive potential, in contrast to many other psychological theories that focused on people's struggles and failings. Peak experience is a term coined by Maslow to describe a characteristic experience of people who were, in his view, self-actualized—fulfilling their human potential. These people reported experiences of wonder, awe, and ecstasy, in which their sense of individuality became absorbed in the world. The descriptions were of a decidedly spiritual, although not necessarily religious, nature. Maslow investigated these experiences through studying the lives of people who he felt were self-actualized, and through interviewing everyday people on their emotionally positive experiences.

In the late twentieth century, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researched a similar concept he termed “flow.” Like peak experiences, flow is a state of absorption that arises when one is engaged in activities that challenge one to use the full extent of their skills. The result can be a positive emotion in which the person “becomes one” with the activity. While peak experiences and flow are not equivalent concepts, they overlap considerably and are regularly investigated in conjunction.

The Nature and Effect of Peak Experiences

To understand the nature of peak experiences, Maslow asked people to describe the most emotionally powerful experience in their lives. He found that people often described such experiences in mystical or spiritual terms. People described feeling intense happiness and integrated with the world. In Religion, Values and Peak Experience, Maslow describes peak experiences as “Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences.”

Not all peak experiences are as intense as described above, but often, people feel changed by them. In the interviews Maslow conducted, people reported trying to repeat such experiences, feeling more compassionate toward others and more accepting and comfortable in the world than they had felt before the experience.

Peak Experiences in the Context of Maslow's Theory of Motivation

Maslow's humanistic theory of personality and motivation sought to describe the positive potential of people. Maslow described people as having B-needs and D-needs. These are hierarchically arranged, often pictured as a pyramid, with the D-needs, D is an abbreviation for deficiency, forming the large pyramidal base. D-needs include physiological needs such as food and sleep, safety needs such as security, love and belonging needs such as friendship, and esteem needs such as confidence and the respect of others. Once these needs are fulfilled to a reasonable level, one can develop B-needs. B is an abbreviation for being. These are the needs associated with self-actualization and living to one's full potential. B-needs include justice, morality, and clear, realistic perception.

Maslow came to his description of self-actualization by examining the lives of historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as friends and acquaintances that he felt were examples of self-actualized or fully functioning people. He looked for commonalities among these people to describe the nature of self-actualization. Maslow concluded that self-actualized people have several characteristics in common, including self-acceptance, realism, autonomy, spontaneity, democratic attitudes, and a need for solitude and privacy.

Maslow found that the people he described as self-actualized described peak experiences much more frequently than people who were not self-actualized, although he noted that almost all people experienced at least some peak experiences in their lifetimes. In interviews, he did find some people, who he called “non-peakers,” who claimed to never have had a peak experience. These people, he said, were overly cognitive, non-emotional, and overly controlled.

Maslow was not the only humanistic psychologist who described the nature of self-actualization. American psychologist and one of the founders of humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers, used the term actualizing tendency to describe what he saw as the innate tendency of the person to fulfill their potential. Rogers's focus was on how, in therapeutic relationships, this innate tendency could be fostered in the service of healing, while Maslow did not describe a therapeutic process. Maslow and Rogers described the self-actualized person in similar terms, but Rogers did not include peak experiences in his description. Perhaps most importantly, Rogers argued that all individuals strive for self-actualization, although this tendency for actualization can be thwarted under harsh circumstances. Maslow, in contrast, believed very few people, perhaps as little as 2 percent of the population, attained self-actualization.

Maslow's investigations led him to conclude that peak experiences may vary with age. The college-age students he interviewed were more likely to describe emotionally intense experiences than were older individuals. Older individuals were more likely to describe their most positive experiences in terms of serenity rather than intense ecstasy. Maslow termed these “plateau experiences,” in contrast with peak experiences. He found that these sorts of serene experiences were more consistent than intense peak experiences, which could be relatively rare. In the later part of Maslow's life, he began to investigate how practicing meditation might help one achieve and sustain plateau experiences.

The situations that evoke peak experiences vary from person to person, and perhaps from culture to culture. In general, however, being in nature, hearing or performing music, or being with loved ones are commonly cited as situations in which peak experiences are more likely to be experienced. These situations seem to encourage the emotional openness that may be a prerequisite for a peak experience. For some people, ingesting hallucinogenic drugs may also induce peak experiences.

Peak experiences may also vary by culture. Maslow himself did not study cultural differences, but psychologist Gayle Privette researched them. Privette found that cultures might vary in the way they describe their most significant experiences. Chinese people, for example, describe experiencing more serenity than vivid joy in terms of their peak experiences. Portuguese students reported peak experiences related to developmental milestones more than Chinese students. Much cross-cultural investigation remained to be done.

Research on peak experiences

By their nature, peak experiences are difficult to replicate in controlled experimentation in laboratory settings; interviews, questionnaires, and narrative analyses have historically formed the body of research on this topic. Maslow examined historical or archival records of people he felt were self-actualized, and conducted interviews with those he had access to. He also interviewed college students on their peak experiences. His mode of investigation has been criticized for being too open-ended and unsystematic. Such methods can provide a rich description but may lack generality.

To address these limitations, later researchers developed standardized psychometric instruments to quantify and compare peak experiences across broader populations. Privette developed the Experience Questionnaire (EQ) to study the nature of peak experiences. From research using the EQ, three characteristics were found to signify peak experiences: Fulfillment, referring to the intrinsically rewarding nature of peak experiences; Significance, referring to the personal importance or life-altering nature of the event; and Spirituality, referring to the absorption of the self into the experience and the sense of unity or transcendence. The EQ has been adapted to suit cross-cultural research and diverse contexts, including educational settings, psychotherapy, and organizational psychology. Researchers have translated and validated the EQ in multiple languages to assess whether these core components of peak experiences hold across different cultural frameworks. Some studies have even used the EQ to examine peak experiences in religious rituals, music performance, and athletic competition.

Eugene Mathes and collaborators also examined peak experiences as measured by questionnaires called the Peak Scale and the Absorption Scale, which aimed to quantify the mystical or transcendent aspects of peak experiences, particularly among college students. The Absorption Scale has been used and adapted to assess an individual's general tendency toward immersive and deeply engaging experiences—traits that predict the likelihood of encountering peak states. Other adaptations of this scale have included online environments, with researchers exploring how digital immersion (such as in gaming or virtual reality) might elicit absorption akin to that seen in traditional peak experiences.

In the early twenty-first century, neuroscience research began highlighting the physiological correlates of peak and transcendent experiences. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans and electroencephalogram (EEG) technologies investigated brain activity during states of deep meditation, flow, and mystical absorption. One consistent finding has been the suppression of the Default Mode Network (DMN)—a network associated with self-referential thinking—during such experiences. This deactivation is thought to underlie the temporary loss of ego or sense of self often described during peak states. Andrew Newberg’s work in neurotheology further explored how intense spiritual experiences correspond with specific patterns of brain activation in the frontal lobes and parietal regions (involved in attention, self-awareness, and spatial orientation).

The concept of “flow,” described and researched by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has several characteristics in common with peak experiences, and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. However, although they share some qualities, flow and peak experiences do not seem to be identical experiences. Flow refers to the state of pleasurable absorption that can occur when one is engaged in an activity that challenges but does not exceed one's level of skill. Flow experiences generally occur when a task has clear goals and feedback. Like peak experiences in general, one's sense of self may not be distinct in flow experiences, they are emotionally positive, and one may lose a sense of time during both. Csikszentmihalyi described meditative states as experiences of flow, but most theorizing and research on flow concerns activities such as sports and creative endeavors. Sometimes, the term “peak performance” is used to describe the quality of the outcomes that may occur as a result of activities performed in flow.

Privette clarified the theoretical distinctions described above and found support for them in the descriptions of the experiences of college students. As mentioned above, peak experiences were distinguished by their fulfillment, significance, and spirituality. Peak performance was characterized by the intensity of the focus on the transaction of the self with the environment. Flow was characterized by a sense of play.


Bibliography

“Actualizing Tendency.” Torbay Psychotherapy, 23 Apr. 2022, www.torbaypsychotherapy.com/article/actualizing-tendency. Accessed 28 Mar. 2026.

Cherry, Kendra. "Peak Experiences in Psychology." Verywell Mind, 11 Aug. 2025, www.verywellmind.com/what-are-peak-experiences-2795268. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.

Compton, William C., and Edward Hoffman. Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Flourishing. 4th ed., Sage Publications, 2023.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row, 1990.

Hoffman, Edward. “Maslow, Peak Experiences, and the Body.” Psychology Today, 29 Mar. 2024, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-peak-experience/202403/maslow-peak-experiences-and-the-body. Accessed 28 Mar. 2026.

Jeffrey, Scott. “Peak Experience: A Definitive Guide with Insights from Maslow & Others.” CEO Sage, 25 Aug. 2025, scottjeffrey.com/maslow-peak-experience. Accessed 28 Mar. 2026.

Maslow, Abraham H. Toward a Psychology of Being. 2nd ed., Van Nostrand, 1968.

Maslow, Abraham H. Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. Viking Press, 1970.

Newberg, Andrew B., and Daniel A. Monti. Brain Weaver: Creating the Fabric for a Healthy Mind Through Integrative Medicine. Kales Press in association with the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, 2021.

Privette, Gayle. “Defining Moments of Self-Actualization.” The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology: Leading Edges in Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Kirk J. Schneider, et al., Sage Publications, 2001, pp. 161–80.

Wilson, C. Super Consciousness: The Quest for the Peak Experience. Watkins, 2009.

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