New research has confirmed a common-sense conclusion — with some important takeaways.
People with a more positive outlook on life came through the COVID pandemic better than others did, scientists found. Not only that, adults with high levels of “playfulness” showed stronger resilience during the lockdowns compared to more serious individuals.
These people excelled at “lemonading,” creatively imagining and pursuing the positive, according to research just published in Frontiers in Psychology.
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Study leader Xiangyou “Sharon” Shen of Oregon State University (OSU) said the findings are important because playfulness is an underappreciated resource for building resilience and maintaining well-being during difficult periods such as the pandemic, as news agency SWNS reported of the research.
Shen emphasized that it’s a characteristic that people can develop.
An assistant professor in the OSU College of Forestry and director of the Health, Environment and Leisure Research (HEAL) lab, Shen said, “Understanding how playful people navigate adversity can inform interventions and strategies to help people cope with stress and uncertainty.”
She added that “this is particularly relevant as we face increasing global challenges that require realistic assessment and creative adaptation,” as SWNS noted.
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Chronic stress, she said, is a “significant” public health concern.
It’s linked to a range of health issues, from heart disease and diabetes to depression and anxiety.
“They actively altered challenging situations.”
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News’ senior medical analyst and a clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, shared insights on the study (he was not involved in the research).
“Playfulness and humor, plus expressions of love and happiness, have been shown to increase oxytocin in the brain, the happy hormone that lowers blood pressure, lowers stress levels, and improves overall health,” said Siegel.
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“Humor, love and other positive emotions pass through the deep centers of the brain (pre-frontal cortex/amygdala), which also harbor fear, anxiety and worry,” he said. “So it is impossible to feel both positive and negative emotions at the same time — and the former emotions are much healthier.”
Siegel said that we can learn a lesson from those who were more inventive during the pandemic.
“While it has been shown that remote learning and decreased socialization coupled with increased social media and cell phone use led to increases in anxiety, depression and substance abuse during the pandemic and immediately after, at the same time, families who used this time to encourage play and creative solutions can apply this going forward for better health outcomes,” he said.
Shen of Oregon State University, along with researcher Zoe Crawley of the HEAL lab, broke the study of more than 500 U.S. adults into two separate groups.
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They divided the participants into two cohorts — those with higher levels of playfulness, as measured by the Adult Playfulness Trait Scale, and those with lower levels of the same quality.
They found “ways to create moments of joy even in difficult circumstances.”
Those who were more playful, said Shen, “shared similar perceptions of risk and protective factors as their less playful peers, but demonstrated greater optimism when envisioning future possibilities, engaged in more creative problem-solving and managed to infuse quality and enjoyment into everyday activities.”
She added, “They actively altered challenging situations, found creative substitutes for what was lost, viewed obstacles as opportunities … and maintained a strong sense of control over their responses.”
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Revealingly, she said that while the “highly playful” people didn’t necessarily do different activities or do them more often than the less playful people, they experienced the activities with higher quality — greater immersion, activeness and positive affect.
“This is essentially making lemonade from lemons,” said Shen, “and it’s connected intimately with resilience.”
Shen emphasized that the more positive and playful people “were just as realistic about COVID-19 risks and challenges as others — but they excelled at ‘lemonading.'”
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They discovered “ways to create moments of joy even in difficult circumstances.”
Said Shen, “Playfulness doesn’t distort reality — it enhances it.”
She said that regularly setting aside time for play can be “instrumental.”
It provides a safe space to express and practice playfulness, she indicated.
Even spending just 5 to 10 minutes a day on “a small dose of play” can make a “meaningful difference,” said the researcher.
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