Jay Doubleyou: work and play
Freedom to Learn
The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning.
The Value of Play I: The Definition of Play Gives Insights
Freedom to quit is an essential aspect of play's definition.
Most of this essay is about the defining characteristics of play, but before listing them there are three general points that I think are worth keeping in mind. The first point is that the characteristics of play all have to do with motivation and mental attitude, not with the overt form of the behavior. Two people might be throwing a ball, or pounding nails, or typing words on a computer, and one might be playing while the other is not. To tell which one is playing and which one is not, you have to infer from their expressions and the details of their actions something about why they are doing what they are doing and their attitude toward it.
The second point, toward definition, is that play is not necessarily all-or-none. Play can blend with other motives and attitudes, in proportions ranging anywhere from 0% up to 100% percent play. Pure play occurs more often in children than in adults. In adults, play is commonly blended with other motives, having to do with adult responsibilities. That is why, in everyday conversation, we tend to talk about children “playing” and about adults bringing a “playful attitude” or “playful spirit” to their activities. We intuitively think of playfulness as a matter of degree. Of course we don’t have meters for measuring these things, but I would estimate that my behavior in writing this blog is about 80% play.
The third point is that play is not neatly defined in terms of some single identifying characteristic. Rather, it is defined in terms of a confluence of several characteristics. People before me who have studied and written about play have, among them, described quite a few such characteristics; but they can all be boiled down, I think, to the following five: (1) Play is self-chosen and self-directed; (2) Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends; (3) Play has structure, or rules, which are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players; (4) Play is imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life; and (5) Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.
The more fully an activity entails all of these characteristics, the more inclined most people are to refer to that activity as play. By “most people” I don’t just mean most scholars who study play. Even young children are most likely to use the word play for activities that most fully contain these five characteristics. These characteristics seem to capture our intuitive sense of what play is. Notice that all of the characteristics have to do with the motivation or attitude that the person brings to the activity. Let me elaborate on these characteristics, one by one, and expand a bit on each by pointing out some of its implications for thinking about the purposes of play.
1. Play is self-chosen and self-directed; players are always free to quit.
Play is, first and foremost, an expression of freedom. It is what one wants to do as opposed to what one is obliged to do. The joy of play is the ecstatic feeling of liberty. Play is not always accompanied by smiles and laughter, nor are smiles and laughter always signs of play; but play is always accompanied by a feeling of “Yes, this is what I want to do right now.” Players are free agents, not pawns in someone else’s game.
2. Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends.
Many of our actions are “free” in the sense that we don’t feel that other people are making us do them, but are not free, or at least are not experienced as free, in another sense. These are actions that we feel we must do in order to achieve some necessary or much-desired goal, or end. We scratch an itch to get rid of the itch, flee from a tiger to avoid getting eaten, study an uninteresting book to get a good grade on a test, work at a boring job to get money. If there were no itch, tiger, test, or need for money, we would not scratch, flee, study, or do the boring work. In those cases we are not playing...
3. Play is guided by mental rules.
Play is freely chosen activity, but it is not freeform activity. Play always has structure, and that structure derives from rules in the player’s mind. This point is really an extension of the point just made about the importance of means in play. The rules of play are the means. To play is to behave in accordance with self-chosen rules. The rules are not like rules of physics, nor like biological instincts, which are automatically followed. Rather, they are mental concepts that often require conscious effort to keep in mind and follow...
4. Play is non-literal, imaginative, marked off in some way from reality.
Another apparent paradox of play, also pointed out by Vygotsky, is that play is serious yet not serious, real yet not real. In play one enters a realm that is physically located in the real world, makes use of props in the real world, is often about the real world, is said by the players to be real, and yet in some way is mentally removed from the real world...
5. Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.
This final characteristic of play follows naturally from the other four. Because play involves conscious control of one’s own behavior, with attention to process and rules, it requires an active, alert mind. Players do not just passively absorb information from the environment, or reflexively respond to stimuli, or behave automatically in accordance with habit. Moreover, because play is not a response to external demands or immediate strong biological needs, the person at play is relatively free from the strong drives and emotions that are experienced as pressure or stress. And because the player’s attention is focused on process more than outcome, the player’s mind is not distracted by fear of failure. So, the mind at play is active and alert, but not stressed. The mental state of play is what some researchers call “flow.” Attention is attuned to the activity itself, and there is reduced consciousness of self and time. The mind is wrapped up in the ideas, rules, and actions of the game...
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Does this extended definition of play make sense to you? Does it fit with the way that you think of play in everyday life? I ask this question genuinely. I want, for my own work, to be sure that I am using a concept of play that fits with the concept of play that people find useful in everyday discourse. I would very much appreciate your comments on this.
As I said, over the next few weeks I will be elaborating on the various functions of play, both for children and for adults, and I will refer from time to time to the definition of play that I have provided in this post. Keep tuned.
Does this extended definition of play make sense to you? Does it fit with the way that you think of play in everyday life? I ask this question genuinely. I want, for my own work, to be sure that I am using a concept of play that fits with the concept of play that people find useful in everyday discourse. I would very much appreciate your comments on this.
As I said, over the next few weeks I will be elaborating on the various functions of play, both for children and for adults, and I will refer from time to time to the definition of play that I have provided in this post. Keep tuned.
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See new book, Free to Learn
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Reference
Lev S. Vygotsky, “The Role of Play in Development,” in M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, 92-104. (1978, original essay published in 1933).
The Value of Play I: The Definition of Play Gives Insights | Psychology Today
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