The 4 ways of being playful

Here's yet another quaternity in human life. An interesting article popped up in my FaceBook feed; psychologists have apparently identified 4 different type of playfulness in adults.

The psychologist has identified four basic types of playful adults: "There are people who like to fool around with friends and acquaintances. We describe this as other-directed playfulness. By contrast, light-heartedly playful people regard their whole life as a type of game," says Proyer. Another category includes people who like to play with thoughts and ideas -- this describes intellectual playfulness. These people are able to turn monotonous tasks into something interesting. The psychologist describes the final group as being whimsically playful. "These people tend to be interested in strange and unusual things and are amused by small day-to-day observations."

Psychology: Playful people are at an advantage (ScienceDaily)


It's important to remember that the four functions aren't some kind of Platonic template that everything in our lives fits. A more accurate way to look at it is that there is a Platonic template for fourness in human psychology, and Jung's four psychological functions fit into that framework. However, while it's generally a bad idea to try to force every quaternity into the four functions, it seems to hold water in this instance.

The people who like to play with people are clearly primarily or secondarily feeling types, and those who like to play with ideas are clearly thinking types. I'm not sure about the other two; the people who regard their whole life as a game, and those who are interested in strange, unusual, and day to day things. My feeling is that the second is the sensation type (especially since sensation types tend to become fascinated by strange and spooky things, as their inferior function is intuition.) Intuitives, especially extroverted intuitives, seem to fit the final category; that of those who see their whole lives as a game. So, in this case it does seem to map onto the four functions!

It's pretty cool how Jung's ideas constantly pop up in our lives. Now if we could only get some researchers to see if there are any correlations between these things and Jung's functions!