Rahner h, homo ludens

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Two hundred sixty-three adult subjects were measured for 1 seriousness and cheerfulness and 2 playfulness. Numerous subjects scored high in both seriousness and cheerfulness thus confirming the existence of homines ludentes.

It was further found that these subjects were among those scoring highest in playfulness. Subjects scoring high in cheerfulness but low in seriousness were, however, even more closely associated with playfulness. The scores for homines ludentes did not differ from the rest of the subjects in the creative and dynamic facets of playfulness.

The importance of developing empirical research to investigate hypotheses derived from non-scientific concepts is discussed. Amabile T. The work preference inventory: Assessing intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol.

Aristotle Crisp R. Barnett L. Playfulness: Definition, design, and measurement Play and Culture Vol. The playful child: Measurement of a disposition to play Play and Culture a Vol. Characterizing playfulness: Correlates with individual attributes and personality traits Play and Culture b Vol. The nature of playfulness in young adults Personality and Individual Differences Vol.

Beermann U. How virtuous is humour? Capps D. Religion and humour: Estranged bedfellows Pastoral Psychology Vol. Caputo J. Open Advanced Search. DeepDyve requires Javascript to function. Please enable Javascript on your browser to continue. Read Article. Download PDF. Share Full Text for Free. Web of Science. Let us know here. System error. Please try again! How was the reading experience on this article? A short summary of this paper. Archive for the Psychology of Religion 35 brill.

Proyera and Frank A. The primary aim of this study was to test the validity of this notion: Do homines ludentes exist? Two hundred sixty-three adult subjects were measured for 1 seriousness and cheerfulness and 2 playfulness.

Numerous subjects scored high in both seriousness and cheerfulness thus confirming the exis- tence of homines ludentes. It was further found that these subjects were among those scoring highest in playfulness. Subjects scoring high in cheerfulness but low in seriousness were, how- ever, even more closely associated with playfulness.

The scores for homines ludentes did not differ from the rest of the subjects in the creative and dynamic facets of playfulness. The importance of developing empirical research to investigate hypotheses derived from non-scientific concepts is discussed. Keywords Adult playfulness; cheerfulness; Ernstheiterkeit; seriousness In his book Man at Play, the Roman Catholic theologian Hugo Rahner , argues that the homo ludens is a man of Ernstheiterkeit.

This German neologism consists of the words Ernst for serious or seriousness and Heiterkeit for cheerfulness or mirth. Proyer, F. The cheerfulness of the homo ludens springs from the rock of his solemnity and it is only from this solid foundation that profound cheerfulness can spring. Rahner sees play as an effortless, transcendent experience: [.

Rahner sees the playful person—the ern- stheitere serious-cheerful person—as a Christian ideal, which can be approached via the practice of the virtue of eutrapelia Rahner, , ; see also Aristotle, In considering the element of playfulness in theology, Rahner, writing a half a century ago, is clearly prophetic. It has been often pointed out that Jesus is never represented in the Bible as laughing or enjoying humour Morreall, , and, until recently, Christian theologians have had little good to say about playfulness.

John Chrysostom, the fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, suggested that although a playful attitude itself is not sinful, it easily leads to sin Schaff, More recently, Harvey Cox made medieval carnival practices the cornerstone of his theology treatise, The Feast of Fools.

Rahner sees this juxtaposition as an integral component of the Christian life. In a more direct test of the relation, Proyer and Ruch found no observable relationships between a global measure for playfulness Proyer, b and a scale measuring religiousness as a strength of character i. While there is volumenous research on play as a behaviour in infants and children e. Barnett , p. Among other reasons, this interest is associated with the emergence of posi- tive psychology as a new discipline.

It has, for example, been argued that play and playfulness facilitate the emergence of positive emotions Fredrickson, , and that these, in turn, increase the level of well-being. Peterson and Seligman proposed a classification of 24 strengths of character and six hierarchically higher ordered virtues.

The possible benefits of Ernstheiterkeit serious-cheerful- ness have, of course, not been investigated in any of these studies—and most certainly not from the theological perspective of Rahner In a somewhat related field, namely humour-research, however, the combi- nation of seriousness and cheerfulness has already been addressed.

These com- ponents represent habitual dispositions for lowered cheerfulness and elevated seriousness, bad mood thresholds for the induction of exhilaration and laughter. Hence, cheerfulness facilitates the expression of humour e. Due to experience derived from focus groups, Barnett identified being cheerful as one of the characteristics of playful adults. Proyer b found a positive relationship between cheerfulness and playful- ness and, at the same time, negative associations with seriousness.

There were, however, no analyses conducted for seriousness and cheerfulness combined. Another clear finding of this study was that that cheerfulness and playful- ness are not synonymous: i. There are, for exam- ple, facets of playfulness relating to spontaneity and creativity that exist with- out relationship to cheerfulness and seriousness e.

This last scale is used to measure the intensity of four global factors or facets of playfulness: gregarious e. The use of this combination of tests allowed for the determination of which characteristics of the homo ludens were more strongly related to seriousness and cheerfulness than others and which facets of playfulness are true reflections of Ernstheiterkeit serious-cheerfulness.

Common sense alone would suggest that participants who scored high in cheerfulness and low in seriousness would be found to be particularly playful see Barnett, ; Proyer, b, c. One approach to answering these questions is the present study. The main aim of the present study was to test the relationships among seri- ousness, cheerfulness and various facets of playfulness.

Based on earlier works it was expected that cheerfulness would be positively and seriousness would be negatively associated with playfulness at the level of bivariate correlations.

Some earlier studies reported greater levels of playfulness in younger people but no gender differ- ences e. Therefore, we controlled for age in all our analyses. About one-third Com- pared with the general population, the educational status of the sample was rather high with slightly more than half For the present study, only the cheerfulness and seriousness scale were relevant; nonetheless the full standard test was adminis- tered to the participants in order to maintain the psychometric properties of the scale.

Alpha coefficients in this sample were. All items are positively keyed. The alpha-coefficient in this study was. Its subscales are spontaneous e. Glynn and Webster report satisfactory reliability coeffi- cients and data on convergent and predictive validity.

A list of playfulness statements was created using 15 adjectives identified by Barnett as being indicative for playfulness. They were rephrased into items e. Items were aggregated as suggested by Barnett ; this provides scores for four scales; i. These items have been used earlier in research e. Procedure Students in a course on psychometrics collected the data as part of the course requirements. They distributed the questionnaires among their friends and family as well as to people in public places e.

Participants were not paid for their services but were informed that their contribution would help answer basic research questions. All data were collected in paper-pencil format and participants either returned the question- naires directly to the experimenters or sent them back via post. Results Preliminary analyses revealed that the various indicators of playfulness con- verged well without being redundant. Further analyses showed that some of the variables varied with demograph- ics.

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