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To Love and Play: Testing the Association of Adult Playfulness with the Relationship Personality and Relationship Satisfaction

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Abstract

It is hypothesized that playfulness in adults is positively associated with relationship satisfaction and that specific types of attachment and love are related with this trait. Findings, based on two samples of adults that are currently in a relationship (N = 161 and 598), show that playfulness is positively associated with relationship satisfaction—albeit low in effect size. Playfulness shares about 17 % overlapping variance with different types of love and attachment; particularly, Seduction, low Market Orientation, Attachment, and Love were predictive for playfulness. While gender differences only played a minor role it was shown that playfulness mediates about 5.7 % of the gender differences in the inclination to Sexuality. Overall, findings are in the expected direction. The discussion highlights the importance of considering multidimensional measures for playfulness and satisfaction and gives future research directions.

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Fabian Gander and Sara Wellenzohn for their help with the data collection and to Tracey Platt and Lisa Wagner for comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. The data collection was facilitated by a research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF; 100014_132512).

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  1. Section on Personality and Assessment, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmühlestrasse 14/Box 7, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

    René T. Proyer

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Proyer, R.T. To Love and Play: Testing the Association of Adult Playfulness with the Relationship Personality and Relationship Satisfaction. Curr Psychol 33, 501–514 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-014-9225-6

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