Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Psychological Benefits of Play

It has become increasingly recognized that play is essential for a full, healthy, and creative life. There is even a (U.S.) National Institute for Play, set up to study and promulgate these benefits. Various psychological advantages have been claimed over the years by different researchers and practitioners. These include especially the role of play in learning, its encouragement of creativity, its use in therapy, and its protection against stress.

Play and Learning

If learning is undertaken as a form of work, it can be experienced as an unwelcome chore, and avoided wherever possible. Such learning, where it occurs, will tend to be repetitious and involve rote learning. It will also tend to be mechanical and superficial. However, if it is experienced as a kind of play, then it will be entered into with joyful gusto, cherished and prolonged. It will also tend to be creative. A whole tradition in education—known as progressive education—is based on this premise of experiential learning and has developed various methods of harnessing play to learning. The basic idea goes back at least as far as the philosopher Rousseau, although the educationists Pestalozzi and Froebel are often credited with the origins of this movement in the early 19th century. Pestalozzi encouraged learning through play activity, and Froebel pioneered the kindergarten idea and developed various play materials. This approach was further developed by Montessori and other educationists in the early 20th century and remains a strong influence in education.

It has, in any case, been argued that play does not need to be encouraged by parents and educationists, but that it occurs naturally and spontaneously in children. Its role here is said to be innate and essential. Such play might seem like just “messing around,” and time wasting, but actually provides the child with essential experiences and allows him or her to practice and test various developing skills. These might be basic psychomotor skills, such as those developed in early childhood (holding things, throwing them, et cetera) or more sophisticated socials skills, such as sharing, table manners and role-play. Children need to try new things if they are to develop, and also to test the limits of what is allowed in different social contexts. All of these can be tried out through play in such as way that, if things go wrong, no real long-lasting harm will result.

Play and Creativity

It has often been claimed that creativity depends on a playful state of mind. Since, in play, there are normally no real consequences, it is possible to experiment and be spontaneous in a way that is difficult to justify when much is at stake. Also, one is able to follow thoughts and ideas that seem interesting without having to exclude everything that does not lead by the shortest route to a fixed goal. It has been argued that art is the highest form of playful creation, the classical form of this idea being developed by philosopher Friedrich Schiller in the 18th century. The importance of play to creativity has been emphasized in recent times by social scientist Brian Sut-ton-Smith, who has argued that play is the expression of a deep system of alternatives that culture can call on when innovation is required. Furthermore, play tends to destabilize cultures that are becoming rigid, and hence encourage change.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution