This book had its origins in the early 1980s, when we were working together at Cambridge University’s Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour on the developmental origins of behaviour. Our research led us to become increasingly interested in play behaviour and its role in enabling the developing organism to acquire valuable skills and experience. We promised ourselves that one day we would write a book together on the subject. However, we were also preoccupied with many other duties. Work on the present book was put off again and again, although we collaborated on two other books, one of which is now in its third edition (Bateson & Martin, 1999; Martin & Bateson, 2007). Finally, though, we started to develop our ideas about play in book form.

The different meanings given to the term ‘play’ have created much confusion and have contributed to the view that play is enigmatic and almost beyond the boundaries of science. The categorisation of play as any behaviour that is not ‘serious’ has tended to trivialise an activity that is likely to have important beneficial outcomes, both in humans and other species. We became particularly interested in the links between playfulness and creativity, and aware of the difference between generating novel forms of behaviour or ideas (creativity) and implementing worthwhile inventions in a practical way (innovation). Inevitably the book has taken on a different shape from what we had originally envisaged and the focus has enlarged to take in other aspects of human affairs. Playful play can be a serious business.

Humorous people often behave playfully and playful people tend to have a good sense of humour. At face value, play and humour are connected. Further consideration reveals some shared underlying features. Play and humour both occur in protected contexts, where the rules of engagement are somehow different from ‘serious’ behaviour. They are both intrinsically motivating and enjoyable for their own sake. They are both accompanied, at least in some instances, by a distinctive positive mood. And they both involve combining things in unusual ways. Like play, humour is associated with the generation of novel and occasionally fruitful ideas and therefore can be highly creative.

Charles Darwin (1877) saw the connection between humour and play when he kept careful notes on the development of his first child, William Erasmus. Like many parents before him and since, he found that the game of peek-a-boo generated great amusement and laughter-like gurgling in his child. He wrote: ‘I was at first surprised at humour being appreciated by an infant only a little above three months old, but we should remember how very early puppies and kittens begin to play.’ The educational psychologist Nina Lieberman (1977), who worked on creativity in schoolchildren, also saw a link between humour and playfulness. Indeed, she used humour as part of her definition of playfulness in the children she studied.

Even the most cursory glance at humanity reveals the enormous importance of each person’s experience, upbringing and culture. Take the astonishing variation among humans in language, dietary habits, mating customs, child-care practices, clothing, religion, architecture, art, and much else besides. Nobody could seriously doubt the remarkable human capacity for learning from personal experience and learning from others. Many of the differences between people derive from what happened to them when they were young. It would be very surprising, therefore, if play in childhood had no effect on adult behaviour. The question that is central to the theme of this book is this: does play in childhood enhance creativity in later life? Governments of all stripes recognise the need for innovation in order to produce prosperity. Scientists and engineers similarly understand the need for creative and innovative thinkers in their profession. We argue in this chapter that play and playfulness in childhood are potentially important in making adults more creative. Play comes in many forms, particularly in children, so we consider whether some types of play are more important than others in affecting subsequent creativity. We also touch on the role of playfulness in education.

The belief that play is an important part of how children acquire knowledge has been extraordinarily influential in educational circles in Britain and North America. Peter Smith (2010) commented that many researchers in this field had gone too far in assuming that play was essential for normal development and that playing was the best, or only, way of acquiring essential skills and experience. Such scepticism about the significance of play has not removed concern on the part of others that apparent restrictions on aspects of children’s play in the developed world could have unfortunate and unintended consequences for their development. We return to this issue later in the chapter.

This final chapter on biological aspects of play forms a further backdrop to our investigation into the links between play, playfulness, creativity and innovation. No serious biologist disputes that organisms have changed over geological time or that they continue to change, such as when insects acquire resistance to pesticides or bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics. Other organisms have become extinct, many of them in the last decade. What requires explanation is the way in which these evolutionary changes take place. Darwin observed that since members of a species differ from each other, some are more likely to survive and reproduce than others. If the characteristics of these individuals were inherited by their offspring, the descendants would be better adapted to their environment than individuals that did not have those characteristics. So, by the process he termed ‘natural selection’, lineages would evolve. What then can be said about the evolution of play and playfulness?

Surplus energy

In writing about the biology of art, Desmond Morris (1962) suggested that artistic expression became possible when animals had evolved to the point where they had enough surplus energy to engage in it. Gordon Burghardt (2005) developed this idea in relation to play. He suggested that four main factors might have been necessary for the evolution of play.

1. The animals had sufficient metabolic energy to engage in the sustained vigorous activity that typifies play.

2. They were buffered against serious stress and food shortages.

3. They needed to be sufficiently aroused to use the surplus energy in play.

4. The animals were likely to benefit from the experience obtained through play.

The definition of play has been a recurrent bugbear in the biological literature, as Robert Fagen (1981) recognised in his groundbreaking book Animal Play Behavior. Part of the problem is that human observers are all too ready to interpret other species’ behaviour in terms of their own experience. Their definitions are ostensive rather than operational – that is to say, they point to a real example of the behaviour and say: ‘That is what we mean by play’. For those scientists who are not present to be shown what is meant, the definition may be supported by verbal descriptions, drawings or videos. Such descriptions of play are often accompanied by the statement that the behaviour is not serious, in the sense that it does not apparently satisfy an immediate biological need of the individual, such as obtaining food or winning a fight.

The label ‘play’, when applied to animal behaviour, draws attention to how readily humans project onto other animals the perceptions they have of themselves and their fellow human beings. Such projection was revealed in many people’s reactions to a beautifully illustrated book called Why Cats Paint by Busch and Silver (1994), which caused a flurry of interest among art critics. The book contained paintings supposedly produced by cats. Like those by some captive chimpanzees, the cats’ artistic creations were seen as ‘joyous and full of life’. Moreover, the cats were not simply creating abstract pictures, they were said to be doing so playfully. The book attracted serious reviews in major newspapers, amazing though this may seem.

Dreaming, like humour, has a number of features in common with play. It occurs in a protected context and combines existing thoughts into novel combinations, potentially providing a safe way to discover new connections and possibilities. Dreaming has been linked explicitly to creativity; many writers, artists, musicians and even some scientists have claimed that good ideas came to them in the course of dreaming (Martin, 2002). Other states of consciousness besides dreaming and wakefulness may also be occasional sources of new ideas. In this chapter we look at dreaming, daydreaming and the altered mental states induced by alcohol and other psychoactive drugs. We consider their relationship with play and their influence on creativity. Strong claims have been made by some creative people about their enhanced ability to come up with good ideas when in such states (Martin, 2008).

DREAMS

Everybody dreams but most people rapidly forget their dreams when they wake up. When dreams are remembered, they are found to consist of familiar thoughts, images and memories mixed together in unusual and sometimes bizarre ways (Martin, 2002). A person may attempt to make sense of these novel sequences and, in so doing, generate something that is genuinely creative. As Arthur Koestler (1964) described it, links are forged between disparate things that would never be connected when awake. People who would not consider themselves especially creative can be remarkably good at producing novel ideas when they dream, and some of these ideas can be harnessed in waking life. As with play, most of the novel combinations are of no practical use, but once in a while something genuinely interesting emerges. It is also worth remembering that dreaming occupies a remarkably large slice of human existence. By the time someone dies, he or she may have spent in total around 25 years asleep, of which several years will have been in the dream state (Martin, 2002).

In this chapter, we consider the general question of play’s biological function or functions – in other words, what play is for. This question is not directed at the individual’s immediate motivation; it is concerned with how various aspects of play increase the individual’s chances of surviving and reproducing. The biological costs of play, such as they are, must presumably be outweighed by its biological benefits, otherwise animals that played would be at a disadvantage compared with those that did not, and play would not have evolved. Our central concern in this book is the link between play and creativity and hence innovation. Inasmuch as this link brings benefits in terms of enhancing the organism’s chances of survival and reproduction, the way in which play does this is one of its biological functions. However, many other functions have been proposed for play besides enhancing creativity.

The four whys

For most behavioural biologists, the difference between motivation and function is obvious, but some psychologists are uninterested in or unaware of the distinction made by Niko Tinbergen (1963). He recognised that biologists working on behaviour focus on different types of problem. Some want to know, for instance, how the expression of a particular character is controlled, while others want to know how it benefits the organism. Tinbergen pointed out that four fundamentally different types of problem are raised in biology: mechanism, development, function and evolution. These can be expressed in terms of four questions about any feature of an organism:

• How does it work?

• How did it develop during the lifetime of the individual?

• What is it for?

• How did it evolve over the history of the species?

We have argued from biological evidence that experiences gained during play can be used later in life and put together in novel ways to solve new problems. Play experiences may also lead immediately to the discovery of new ways of doing things. At the heart of play is the pleasure of engaging in the activity or thought process for its own sake, without any extrinsic reward. Even so, the creativity fostered by play can bring its own rewards. These will be intrinsic, but the rewards may also be material if creativity leads to successful innovation that benefits the player and others. In this chapter we first examine how others have viewed the satisfaction that creativity brings and the conditions that are conducive to creativity in organisations. We then consider how prior opportunities for play can facilitate the discovery of new ideas. Once discovered, the process of translating new ideas into innovations involves different skills.

INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY

The social psychologist and educationalist Graham Wallas (1926) described five stages of the creative process, from preparation, incubation, intimation and illumination through to verification. Preparation involves formulating the problem to be solved. Incubation involves pondering potential solutions, possibly over a long period of time. Intimation involves articulating ways in which the problem might be solved, and illumination and verification involve testing the possibilities. Like others before him, Wallas considered creativity to be a process that allows humans to adapt to their changing environment. Since his time, the concept of creativity has developed extensively.

Creativity can be defined in different ways. We use ‘creativity’ here in the sense of generating novel actions or ideas, particularly by recombining existing actions, ideas or thoughts in new ways or applying them in new situations. In our view, it is preferable to consider separately, under the heading of ‘innovation’, the question of whether those new behaviour patterns or ideas are practically useful and widely adopted by others. For our purposes, creativity is simply about generating novelty and it is a precursor to innovation.

Measures of human creativity have been strongly influenced by J. P. Guilford’s (1956) distinction between two styles of thought, which he described as diverging and converging. The diverging individual is more open to new ideas and the converging individual is more critical and analytical. The differences between the two cognitive styles are measured by what is called the Alternate Uses Task. When asked what can be done with, say, a brick, the convergent thinker says it is used for building a wall. The divergent thinker suggests many different uses, such as a doorstop, a hammer, breaking windows, repelling an attacker, grinding up to make red paste, and so forth. Scoring highly on psychological measures of divergent thinking is sometimes regarded as though it were synonymous with being highly creative, but it is of course just one measure of one aspect of human creativity.