Playfulness and Stress: A Fundamental Psychological Resource During COVID-19

Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash

During the pandemic, we lost much more than routines; we lost mental space and psychological resources. The implicit belief that stress was something of quiet endurance was stripped away. Discussions focused on vaccines and lockdowns and infection rates to cope with the mental strain of COVID-19’s impact on our experiences. But how did people manage their inner experience? Research suggests that playfulness had an active role in a person’s ability to navigate stress; that it’s a core psychological resource shaped by a mindset that governs mental resilience, interpretation of strain and success of coping strategies.

Most research on stress centres around pathology; depression, anxiety, trauma and risk factors, yet the paper by Clifford and colleagues highlights a key trait that is rarely considered as a serious mechanic in adulthood – playfulness. The researchers examined the relationship between stress perception and coping outcomes during the extreme stressor that was the global pandemic in 2020.

Adult playfulness appears differently to what immediately comes to mind. It does not revolve around ‘silly’ behaviour or leisure time, but is considered a disposition and a way of framing events that encourages agency and reinterprets threat. Stress is not ignored through this lens, but instead is interpreted and reframed. Psychologists have acknowledged playfulness as something other than just an escape, but as a tendency to see situations with creativity, humour and flexibility that allows movement and positive wellbeing.

The pandemic was undoubtedly a period of prolonged, uncontrollable stress. Many people, unsurprisingly, reported high stress levels across the board, but the key difference was the interpretation of that stress. While some felt overwhelmed and helpless, others, still facing the same external conditions, felt a greater sense of self efficacy, ability to adapt to and influence outcomes, and cope, overall. The key difference separating these groups was not intelligence or income or education; it was playfulness. More playful adults were less likely to interpret stress as paralysing and more likely to engage with it, and they were not less stressed, they were less defeated by it.

This changes the narrative; stress is not inherently a bad thing, but chronic helplessness can be. Playfulness may act as a psychological buffer, changing the meaning of what difficulty is.

Let’s consider playfulness as a strategy, using creativity to problem solve, reimagine situations and consider alternative perspectives. This has meaning outside the conditions of the pandemic, it can be applied to many aspects of daily life. Professionals are rewarded for seriousness and play is seen as distraction, yet the workplace can often create similar feelings of uncertainty and stress just as the pandemic did – so why not use play as a tool rather than something to save for leisure time? If our culture demands adaptability, why suppress one of the traits that enables it?

Adulthood has a failing; a belief that in order to be taken seriously, one must be serious. Humour is tolerated but in appropriate conditions and curiosity must be justified in the outcomes, not the route to get there. Rigid adults struggled in the pandemic and the flexible ones improvised; they were able to mentally play with the new constraints, change routines and adapt to the opportunity. The unfortunate reality is that many of us have trained playfulness out of ourselves in favour of success and maturity, and may be the reason that so many suffer from burnout when our situations become unmanageable.

Resilience is not toughness, it’s interpretation. Imagine viewing crises like puzzles, with less dead ends and more challenge, more agency. In leadership, parenting, relationships and careers, the ability to reinterpret circumstances may matter more than the circumstances themselves; those with better psychological faring are not only strong, they are mentally agile (something that looks suspiciously like play). Is seriousness the same as competence? How often do we overlook playfulness as a liability? If playfulness is a psychological resource, why are we so eager to abandon it in adulthood?

Play, obviously, will not solve everything, but it alerts us to something important; our relationship with stress is as important as the existence of the stress itself.

When looking at play through the depth psychology lens, playfulness is not just a coping tactic, it’s the psyche’s mechanism that keeps itself alive despite pressure. If life becomes too rigid, repetitive or overwhelming, the psyche seeks movement through symbol, imagination and seeking alternative meaning. Play is how the unconscious reintroduces elasticity when the ego weakens. During periods of prolonged stress, an overidentified adult ‘self’, the one that considers itself to be serious and controlled and competent, can become a psychological trap. Playfulness is a voice for other parts of the psyche to speak, the curious, absurd and creative. These parts are not regressions, but compensations, preventing the personality from collapsing into a narrow identity. Playfulness then becomes a restorative tool for psychic balance when consciousness becomes too one sided.

The full paper, published in Current Psychology, 2022, can be found here:

Relationships among adult playfulness, stress, and coping during the COVID-19 pandemic - PMC

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