EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF ADULT PARTICIPATION IN PLAYFUL ACTIVITIES

Playfulness in adulthood has been shown to be un-researched scientific issue. We believe that it is because of earlier non-recognition of this issue as a special field of study, but also the existence of a popular belief that the playful activities are reserved only for children. Just because of the lack of initiative and coherent researches that take into account playful activities in adulthood and characteristic of playfulness as a personal trait this research can be considered as the first research of that kind in the Republic of Serbia. The aim of this research is to determine adult perceptions of their playfulness and dominant cognitive qualities of playfulness. Adult Playfulness Trait Scale was used (APTS, Shen, Chick & Zin, 2014) to explore adult playfulness and inherent cognitive characteristic of this personal trait. Research sample consists of 1234 adult individuals aged from 18 to above 60 years from a cities and villages of Serbian area. The results of this research show that respondents recognize and highly value all tree sub-dimensions of playfulness trait: fun-seeking motivation, uninhibitedness and spontaneity. An important finding of this research is one that indicates on the characteristics of fun-seeking motivation sub-dimension as dominant one.