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Adult playfulness contributes to well-functioning romantic relationships, claim the authors, who study the association between playfulness of several kinds (other directed, lighthearted, intellectual, whimsical) and six specific attitudes towards love they call love styles-eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania and agape. To do so, they engaged seventy-seven heterosexual couples to rate the love styles against a checklist for playful behaviors in romantic relationships the authors call the Playful Love Checklist (PLC). The authors then analyzed the responses for similarities and robust associations, either negative or positive, between partners for their views on playfulness in love relationships. Their findings suggest, among other things, that current conceptualizations of playfulness do not much overlap with what other researchers have called the ludic lover, and the authors' analysis of self-ratings and partner ratings contributes to our understanding of the association between playfulness and love styles. Key words: adult playfulness; love; love styles; ludus; playfulness; romantic relationships
Playfulness as an individual differences variable enables adults to frame a situation they experience as entertaining, intellectually stimulating, and personally interesting (Proyer 2017; see also Barnett 2007). Lately, our understanding of playfulness has broadened, and though many early conceptualizations focused on play's contribution to joy, fun, and entertainment, newer modes encompass facets not primarily directed at fun or entertainment. A recently developed structural model differentiates among four basic play facets: other directed- using playfulness to cheer up others or to solve social tension in interactions with others; lighthearted-seeing life as more a playground for improvisation than a battlefield for competition; intellectual-involving the cognitive aspects of playfulness with a preference for complexity over simplicity, for viewing problems from different angles and perspectives; and whimsical-finding amusing aspects in everyday situations and interactions with a liking of odd things or activities. These constitute the Proyer (2017) OLIW model. Here, we consider the association between self-rated and partner-rated playfulness and different attitudes towards love (love styles) in romantic couples.
Adult Playfulness and Romantic Relationships
The study of love styles and romantic relationships seems to offer a natural home for playfulness research. Structural models of playfulness frequently contain facets directed at interpersonal functioning. Among these, we have already mentioned other-directed playfulness in Proyer's OLIW model. Other examples include gregarious playfulness (Barnett 2007), playfulness retrieved in focus groups of...