GO MIP - Missing in Play

"The face of the wise man is not somber or austere, contracted by anxiety and sorrow, but precisely the opposite: radiant and serene, and filled with a vast delight, which often makes him the most playful of men."  - Philo

In the study of playfulness, researchers attempt to isolate and define play as an internal state of mind rather than a mere description of how someone acts. Charles Darwin studied the playful mechanics of tickling. Sigmund Freud wrote about the role of play in emotional development. Most psychologists, interested in play, focus on children rather than adults. Even animals play.

According to a group of researchers at Pennsylvania State University, people who exhibit high levels of playfulness have a predisposition to becoming spontaneous, outgoing, creative, fun-loving, and lighthearted. They cope well with stress, lead active lifestyles, and succeed academically. 

In Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation (2013), British researchers Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin determine playful activities. For them, this means: “cheerful, frisky, frolicsome, good-natured, joyous, merry, rollicking, spirited, sprightly [and/or] vivacious.” 

Research suggests that child’s play helps children “practice” for the real world. They learn to solve problems and deal with emotions they might encounter later in life. We can teach ourselves to incorporate it into our lives.

Mary Ann Glynn, a professor at Boston College, discovered in a series of lab experiments and surveys, that playfulness in adults connected to “innovative attitudes” and “intrinsic motivational orientation.” When Glynn asked study participants to compose sentences using a specific set of words and told them to treat the task as work, participants exhibited less creativity and figurative thinking than people who approached the same task as play.

University of Illinois associate professor and playfulness expert Lynn A. Barnett, finds that playful people are less likely to encounter stress in their lives, and that when they do, they’re better at coping with it. 

“People who are playful don’t run away from stress, they deal with it—they don’t do avoidance,” Barnett said.

In a separate study, Barnett found that people who scored high on her playfulness test were much better at entertaining themselves when forced to sit in an empty, boring room than people who didn’t. “The low-playfulness people hated it. They couldn’t wait to get out of there,” said Barnett. The high-playfulness test subjects actively enjoyed staying in the boring room, even though surveillance camera footage showed that they didn’t do anything but sit still while they were in there. “They were just in their heads—they entertained themselves.,” she said.

Even those researchers who think of playfulness as a personality trait suspect it’s a malleable one, which people can develop in themselves if they want to. 

We need to engage in the pleasures of playful activity.

This could include games, dancing, pulling pranks, singing, enjoying musical instruments, or making other people laugh. 

Engaging in a little silliness adds to overall well-being.


Laughter conquers all.

Get on the path of playfulness. Find a playful way to express your day.