Constructing an interactionist framework for playfulness research: Adding psychological situations and playful states

Abstract

Psychological studies of playfulness have been deeply shaped by the traditional trait approach that emphasizes assessment of a decontextualized trait. Integrating insights gained from broader social psychology and personality theories, this paper introduces an interactionist framework for playfulness research and provides conceptual and measurement tools for two hitherto neglected components integral to understanding the trait’s functioning in the real world: psychological situations for play and playful states. Conceptual development and empirical evaluation were carried out through a sequential multi-study design. Results from focus groups, expert reviews, and a survey study confirmed the proposed theory-based conceptual models and provided corroborating evidence for the validity and reliability of two new scales—the Psychological Situations for Play Scale and the Playful State Scale. Implications for a paradigm shift in playfulness research are discussed as are recommendations for future causal modeling of playfulness-environment interactions.

Keywords:

• Playfulness
• psychological situations
• playful states
• interactionism
• measurement development

Acknowledgments

Grateful appreciation is extended to the eight expert reviewers who contributed their expertise to the conceptual evaluation of the Playful State Scale.

Notes

1 The APS failed to be replicated in this study and was subsequently excluded from the analysis.

2 Although personality change is not the focus of this paper, it is a natural deduction of interactionism and thus we include it in the conceptual model. The proposition of long-term changes in traits is consistent with recent findings (e.g., Damian et al., 2019).

3 Often treated as interchangeable with learning.

4 Proyer (2017) conceptualized intellectual as one of the four modes of playfulness. In the corresponding OLIW scale that he developed, individuals with the intellectual playful mode were characterized as “liking to play with ideas and thoughts; liking to think about and solving problems, liking to think about and trying different solutions for a problem, preferring complexity over simplicity” (p. 114).