Identifying Playfulness: An Empirical Study on How Adults Recognize and Define Playfulness Across Culture

Playfulness is a critical concept for the study of games, play, and adult well-being. Empirical and theoretical works have argued for the major influence it has in adult lives around the globe. Despite these affirmations, one of the most commonly described barriers for further work is that there remains little clarity on how playfulness can be identified in diverse contexts. Most definitions are created for narrow applications with little evidence that they apply to other contexts. The inability to identify playfulness, especially across culture, thus remains a major gap for modern researchers. This work addresses this gap with 50 interviews by adults from 38 countries around the world on how they identify playfulness in their own life. Adults across culture identify playfulness with four characteristics: Active Behavior, Emotional Reinforcement, Social Sharing, and Non-Serious Framing. This four-part framework creates a clarifying and innovative vocabulary for future works on playfulness.