A Playful Personality Can Improve Overall Well-Being, Study Shows

Playfulness is often associated with childhood, but the personality trait also has some benefits for adults. Along with turning otherwise dull situations into stimulating events, playful people tend to have greater overall well-being compared to less playful people, new research says. So does this mean more serious individuals are bound to boredom? Not so fast. 

"All of these methods are based on established interventions of positive psychology," researcher Kay Brauer explains in a news release, whereas, the placebo group's activity has no proven influence on playfulness. 

To study the impacts of these three exercises, the participants were asked to fill out questionnaires about their personalities before the study, then again following weeks one, two, four, and 12. "Our assumption was that the exercises would lead people to consciously focus their attention on playfulness and use it more often," Brauer says. "This could result in positive emotions, which in turn would affect the person's well-being." 

Implementing these three, or one of these three, journal prompts into a nightly routine may motivate people to become more playful. Plus, journaling has been shown to improve mental health by managing stress, so the practice may help in more ways than one.