“Play with Me, Darling!” Testing the Associations between Adult Playfulness and Indicators of Sexuality

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have shown that individual differences in adult playfulness are important in interpersonal relationships. However, there is a lack of research on the role of playfulness in human sexuality. Using three studies with four independently collected samples (N_total = 1,124) we tested the differential relations between global playfulness and four facets of playfulness (Other-directed, Lighthearted, Intellectual, Whimsical; OLIW) with broad (“Sexy Seven”) and narrow (sociosexuality, sexual sensation seeking, and sexual compulsivity) sexuality-related personality traits and sadomasochistic sexual practices (BDSM). Our main findings were: (1) Each of the Sexy Seven traits was related to global playfulness or at least one playfulness facet while only Whimsical playfulness (liking odd and/or unusual things, persons, or activities) was related to each Sexy Seven trait; (2) Sexual sensation seeking related to playfulness with small effect sizes (f² ≤ 0.11), Whimsical playfulness positively related to narrow traits of sexuality; and (3) those engaging in BDSM were more playful than non-practitioners. The findings support the notion that playfulness (particularly Whimsical playfulness) relates to sexuality-related personality traits and sadomasochistic practices may be one way of expressing adult playfulness.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Laureen Brilka, Laura Nilges, Anne Nocke, Helene Töpfer, Valerie Weigel, and to the SMJG e.V. for their assistance with collecting the data. We thank Rebekka Sendatzki for her help in computing secondary analyses.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

All data and syntaxes to replicate the findings in this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework under https://osf.io/6cvqj/

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2022.2077289

Notes

¹ Note that we use the expression “predict” in terms of its statistical meaning (i.e., predictor variable). Since our cross-sectional data do not allow causal conclusions, we do not imply causality when using “predict” to describe the regression models.

² The coefficients for the remaining types of playfulness were as follows: SMAP: β = .25, Δf² = 0.06 in Sample 1, Lighthearted: β = .23, Δf² = 0.05 in Sample 1, and Intellectual: β = .33, Δf² = 0.05 in Sample 1.

³ Whimsical playfulness entered the model first with a regression weight of b = 0.65 (p < .001; Odds ratio = 1.91, d = 0.36) and discriminated strongly between BDSM practitioners and non-practitioners.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any funding.