Adult playfulness: An update on an understudied individual differences variable and its role in romantic life... including possible negative effects of playfulness

Adult playfulness: An update on an understudied individual differences variable and its role in romantic life. Kay Brauer  René T. Proyer  Garry Chick. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, March 16 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12589

Abstract: There is increasing interest in the study of individual differences in playfulness in adults; the way people frame or reframe situations in a way that they are experienced as personally interesting, and/or intellectually stimulating, and/or entertaining. In this review, we describe and discuss its role for romantic life. After a brief introduction, we will describe theoretical approaches as to why playfulness is important in romantic life (e.g., the signal theory of playfulness) and give an overview on empirical findings on assortative mating and its role in romantic relationships (e.g., for relationship satisfaction). Finally, we discuss future directions on playfulness in romantic life and singles and open research questions.

Check also Moraes YL, Varella MAC, Silva CSA, Valentova JV (2021). Adult playful individuals have more long- and short-term relationships. Evolutionary Human Sciences 3, e24, 1–10. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2021/04/adult-playful-individuals-have-more.html

6 OPEN QUESTIONS

While the majority of findings suggests that playfulness contributes positively to relationships, no study has yet examined negative consequences of playfulness in relationships. Drawing on Berger et al.'s (2017) hypothesis that a maladaptive reframing process might contribute to develop psychiatric disorders that are related to cognitive biases (e.g., anxiety disorder); one might expect that some types of playfulness are associated with phenomena such as jealousy, the perceived threat of one's relationship (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989). Taking the findings on relations with the mistrust facet into account (Proyer et al., 2019a), one might expect that whimsical playfulness accounts for actor effects in jealousy, whereas partners of those high in Lighthearted playfulness might show greater jealousy due to perceptions of lower commitment to the relationship and greater concern of the dissolution of the relationship. Furthermore, attachment styles describe how people approach and deal with close relationships (Fraley & Roisman, 2019) based on the two orthogonal dimensional anxiety (i.e., worries over close relationships) and avoidance (i.e., reducing interdependence by avoiding closeness). It would be desirable to examine potential consequences (e.g., mediator effects) of attachment on the associations between playfulness and relationship outcomes. One might argue that playfulness would go along with secure attachment (i.e., low anxiety and avoidance) as playful people have learned to adopt positive views on their relationships when learning their social skills, boundaries, and needs of others in childhood, as discussed with regard to the literature on children's playfulness (e.g., Burghardt, 2005; Lieberman, 1977; Youell, 2008).

Couple‐centered variables have not yet been examined. For example, dyadic coping describes how couples deal with stress by examining the interactions and coping strategies of each partner (Bodenmann, 2005). Prior studies have shown that playfulness relates to adaptive coping mechanisms, which permits dealing with stressors and stress positively (Chang et al., 2013; Magnuson & Barnett, 2013; Qian & Yarnal, 2011). Amongst others, those high in playfulness actively seek social support and companionship to reduce stress. However, no study has yet examined how couples deal with stressors from within (e.g., disagreement) and outside the relationship (e.g., child loss). While one might expect that playfulness would contribute to dyadic coping, this needs to be empirically tested since Herzberg (2013) has shown that individual and dyadic coping are not redundant (e.g., dyadic coping being the stronger predictor of RS and mediating the association between individual coping efforts and RS). Thus, it would be desirable to examine whether playfulness relates to dyadic coping similarly to findings from individuals and to study its effects for outcomes such as RS or disagreement.

Longitudinal studies could help clarifying relationships with criteria such as dissolution or having children and also address partners' co‐development of playfulness over time. The latter could clarify whether partners might become (1) more similar in their playfulness and (2) whether one's playfulness might spillover to the partner's playfulness. There is evidence that playfulness is malleable through minimal interventions (e.g., raising awareness of how one uses playfulness in everyday life; Proyer et al., 2020; Proyer et al., 2021) and it is feasible that one could be stimulated by their partner to be more playful—or, at least, do more playful things and behave more playful. Moreover, effects of co‐development on outcomes such as the quality and quantity of conflicts and RS would be of interest (e.g., Allemand & Martin, 2016).

Prior research has relied mainly on self‐reports of playfulness. An extension to partner/peer reports of playfulness and instruments that allow a good description of playful behaviors in couples is desirable. For the latter, the PLC (Proyer et al., 2018b) might be a good starting point, pending revision of the initial list of items. Also, observational designs could help to learn more about how playfulness is expressed and used in couples. For example, how partners use their playfulness to solve practical problems and behave in situations that potentially go along with conflict could be examined.