Playfulness, Ideas, and Creativity: A Survey

This article investigates whether self-reports about playfulness are related to self-reports about creativity and the alternate uses of objects. An on-line survey was conducted of how people think about themselves. One thousand, five hundred and thirty-six people completed the survey. They were asked whether a variety of statements were very characteristic of themselves through to whether they were very uncharacteristic. Respondents were then asked to offer alternative uses for 2 different objects. Those people who characterized themselves as being playful clearly thought of themselves as being creative. The self-reports of their playfulness, creativity, and innovation were positively correlated with each other and were validated with their suggested uses for 2 different objects. Personality measures were derived from the respondents' self-assessments. On the openness scale, the measure was positively correlated with the respondents' assessments of their own playfulness and with the number of alternative uses for two objects.