In Praise of Play: Personal and Social Benefits

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Play has numerous benefits: You define a problem and test a solution. You resolve a conflict with your parent, spouse or teen by listening to their perspective and exploring it with them. You discover an unexpected connection with your neighbor or workmate when you imagine taking a trip together, anywhere you want, no constraints on time or money or distance. You think up a worst-case scenario and design a response to it that demonstrates your effective ability to cope with challenges. You decide to try an activity you have long yearned to approach. You shed the world of “oughts” and laugh until your body hurts as you witness the absurd, concoct new combinations, and spontaneously respond. You allow yourself the joy of following your nose as you sniff opportunities, pursue possible consequences, and stretch “what is” into “what might be.” You know your impulse control is intact and that you can evaluate any actual course of action before stepping into it.

In other words, you have discovered some of the lifelong benefits of play, and especially of being able to pretend, to play at “make-believe.”

Creativity. Conflict resolution. Expanded perspectives. Courage. Pleasure. Confidence. Harnessing your intuition in the service of becoming what Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius label your most-desired “possible selves.” For more than half a century, psychologists have documented the personal and social benefits of play. Emotional recognition, expression, and general competence; intellectual flexibility, problem-solving, an expanded range of interests; social savvy, ease, and exploration. Comfort and competence in allowing a child—or the child within the adult—to play leads to a happier, less fearful life.

What conditions support the development and expression of play? My mentor, Richard Hackman, described the external forces that affect us as ambient and discretionary. The first, the ambient stimuli, are those aspects of the environment that are part of the background and potentially affect everyone exposed to them—although the impact is often unconscious. Noise level, air quality, amount of space or crowding, lighting, the general speed at which things happen—all these factors can interact with a person’s temperament and create optimal or inhibiting conditions. Ambient stimuli constitute the frame in which culture takes place. The resulting norms and conditions can include:

• Whimsy. An environment replete with touches of whimsy encourages those within it to allow fanciful connections between ideas, objects, and sensory experiences. Out of unusual combinations, novelty is born. What does it feel like to eat a meal in which everything on the plate is one color? Does it matter what color?
• Ambiguity. When natural experiences include a great deal of ambiguity, they facilitate divergent thinking, a huge motor of playfulness. Can you see the same cloud formation as representing multiple possibilities? Can you generate at least four hypotheses for what motivated a behavior?
• Transformation. When people are surrounded by transformations, they naturally reach out to repurpose things and thoughts that can support an alternate role. Using a pitcher as a planter, a scarf as a belt, or a mug as a pencil cup, all underscore a sense of possibility and alternative thinking. Turning a train station into a museum? Marvelous!
• Diversity. When one is surrounded by multiplicity, that which might be seen as foreign becomes far more familiar. The norm of “differences” replaces one of singularity and the range of possibility expands accordingly. How many different ways can you say the same thing? Can you do it with many languages or accents? Perhaps even without words?
• Available props and places. The whimsy, ambiguity, transformation, and diversity that pervade the environment help determine the range of props available for play, as well as places in which one can feel comfortable doing it. When playfulness is sanctioned, a stick can serve as a sword or a staff, a drawing tool, or a support for a flag, and so on—but the sticks do need to be available. Likewise, a blanket can help create a tent, a nest, a picnic spot, or a tarp. Flexibility can reign when the environment supports possibility.

According to Hackman, the discretionary stimuli in the environment are those rewards (or punishments) that are meted out in response to something we actually do. They reinforce behavior that offers the rewards we want or encourage restraint in expressing those behaviors that might bring about negative consequences. They can include:

• Support for imaginative efforts. We live in social settings. When people in those settings reward efforts at thinking “outside the box”—of originality—then half the battle is won. True, the value of the effort must still be assessed. But their social support for generating novelty offers a first step for those people who are important to you not becoming “dream crushers.”
• Encouragement for divergent, exploratory behavior. Similarly, when we allow the natural scientist within us all to flourish, to experiment, to discover, we are supporting an environment of playfulness, a key source of innovation. Alison Gopnik’s book, The Gardener and the Carpenter, argues the case with data and eloquence.
• Sensitivity to human needs. When the people who surround us allow room for human needs to supersede those of goals, they are supporting a culture of playfulness. Rest, nourishment, exercise, companionship, and the emotional sustenance of joy and laughter can provide the stimuli that help playfulness to flourish.
• Promotion of pleasure. Finally, when pleasure is seen as a viable goal in itself, playfulness can be encouraged. Although much positive affect results from sustained efforts, achievements, or a sense of purpose, we are also hard-wired to feel pleasure in play.

What sorts of play bring you pleasure? When and where are you most likely to take pleasure in play and to play with pleasure? Are there conditions that constrict your engagement in playful behaviors? Can you think of ways to adapt those conditions so that they become more supportive?

Copyright 2019 Roni Beth Tower