The Value of Play I: The Definition of Play Gives Insights | Psychology Today

Play in our species serves many valuable purposes. It is a means by which children develop their physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and moral capacities. It is a means of creating and preserving friendships. It also provides a state of mind that, in adults as well as children, is uniquely suited for high-level reasoning, insightful problem solving, and all sorts of creative endeavors.

The first point is that the characteristics of play all have to do with motivation and mental attitude, not with the overt form of the behavior.

The second point, toward definition, is that play is not necessarily all-or-none.

The third point is that play is not neatly defined in terms of some single identifying characteristic. Rather, it is defined in terms of a confluence of several characteristics

boiled down, I think, to the following five: (1) Play is self-chosen and self-directed; (2) Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends; (3) Play has structure, or rules, which are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players; (4) Play is imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life; and (5) Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.