The nature of playfulness in young adults

Abstract

Playful people are uniquely able to transform virtually any environment to make it more stimulating, enjoyable and entertaining. Efforts to more systematically characterize the playful person have proven more fruitful with children than with adults. To determine if playfulness could be identified as a meaningful psychological construct in adults, focus groups of undergraduate students first described characteristics of highly playful and nonplayful people. Six hundred and forty-nine students rated themselves on playfulness and on these descriptors, and then identified and rated others high and low in playfulness. Fifteen qualities were found to uniquely describe a playful individual, resulting in four component qualities of “gregarious”, “uninhibited”, “comedic” and “dynamic” for both men and women. Participants defined playfulness and its inherent qualities in the same way whether they perceived it in themselves or in others.

Introduction

Both lay and empirical observations have long noted that certain individuals appear able to transform virtually any environment to make it (more) enjoyable and entertaining – terming them “playful” individuals. However, efforts to more systematically characterize the playful person and to capture these apparent playful qualities have been more successful with children than with adults (Barnett, 1990, Barnett, 1991a, Barnett, 1991b, Barnett and Kleiber, 1982, Barnett and Kleiber, 1984, Lieberman, 1965, Lieberman, 1966, Rogers et al., 1987). Lieberman (1977) sought to extend her original work with children to adolescents and then to adults, but with less success as the age of the player increased (see also Tegano, 1990). Glynn, 1991, Glynn and Webster, 1992, Glynn and Webster, 1993 attempted to characterize adult playfulness by asking college students and child care workers to provide descriptors that would distinguish high and low playfulness in the workplace (Glynn, 1991). They found five factors that they labeled “spontaneity”, “expressiveness”, “fun”, “creative”, and “silly” (Glynn & Webster, 1992). Their conceptualization of playfulness, however, was based on the assumption that play is the opposite of work – an assumption that has been refuted by theoreticians and empiricists alike (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre, 1989, Starbuck and Webster, 1991). In addition, a number of other problems have been found with the content and construct validity of the scale in capturing the playfulness construct (Kruger, 1995).

The goal of this study was to determine if playfulness could be more precisely identified as a meaningful psychological construct in young adults (university students). This was approached by asking lay persons to provide content based on their natural language and experiences, and by correlating playfulness ratings with personality descriptors, taken both on oneself and on others.