Tickle fetishism: pleasure beyond playfulness
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PROVIDER: S-EPMC11021705 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Playfulness is an individual differences variable that enables people to (re-)frame almost any situation into an entertaining, amusing, intellectually stimulating and/or personally interesting situation by interacting playfully with others, by resolving tension, by liking complexity over simplicity and/or by having a preference for unusual topics, persons and/or activities. We asked 208 German-speaking mothers of 3-5-year-olds to describe their child in 5-10 sentences. Using a list of criteria for playfulness (e.g., actively initiating humor, playful exchange with others or widespread interests), we found that mothers used, on average, two playful characteristics to describe their child (17% did not report any). Greater usage of playful descriptors in the written texts was positively related mainly to greater other-directed and intellectual playfulness of the mothers. The findings are encouraging and suggest that the list of playful criteria in descriptions of children could be used in the study of inter-individual differences in playfulness in young children.
| S-EPMC9598545 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Adult playfulness describes individual differences in (re)framing everyday situations as personally interesting, and/or entertaining, and/or intellectually stimulating. We aimed at extending initial evidence on the interconnectedness between language use and adult playfulness by asking 264 participants (M = 26.5 years, SD = 9.7; 66.7% women) to provide written descriptions of their understanding of playfulness (mean length: 30.6 words; SD = 24.1) and collected self-reports of their playfulness. We used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count methodology to quantitatively analyze the language use in these descriptions and tested the associations with individual differences in participants' age, gender, and playfulness. While higher expressions in all measures of playfulness did go along with writing more content when describing playfulness (rs = 0.13 to 0.25), facet-wise analyses revealed differential findings (e.g., intellectual playfulness relates to using words describing cognitive processes); but the effects were small. We found that being a women and younger age were related to writing longer texts (0.13 ≤ rs ≤ 0.24), and we discovered additional associations between certain LIWC categories and age and gender. Our study expands the knowledge about adult playfulness and its manifestations in natural language use. We embed our findings into previous research and discuss limitations and potential approaches for replication studies.
| S-EPMC9477000 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Social play is associated with the experience of positive emotions in higher vertebrates and may be used as a measure of animal welfare. Altering motivation to play (e.g., through short-term social isolation) can temporarily affect play levels between familiar individuals, a process which may involve emotional contagion. This study investigated how forming groups based on known differences in the personality trait "playfulness" (i.e., the longer-term propensity of an individual to actively play from adolescence to early adulthood) affects social play. Seventy-six adolescent male Lister Hooded rats underwent a Play-in-Pairs test assessing their playfulness, ranked as high (H), intermediate (I) or low (L). At seven weeks of age, rats were resorted into homogenous groups of similar (LLL, III, HHH), or heterogeneous groups of dissimilar (HII, LII) playfulness. Social play was scored in the home cage at Weeks 8, 10, 12 of age. A second Play-in-Pairs test was performed (Week 11) to assess consistency of playfulness. A Social Preference test investigated whether I rats in heterogeneous groups preferred proximity with I, H or L cage mates. It was found that heterogeneous groups played less than homogeneous ones at adolescence (8 weeks of age), while play levels at early adulthood (Weeks 10 and 12) did not differ between groups. Play in the homogeneous groups decreased with age as expected, while it did not change over time in the heterogeneous groups, which did not compensate for the lower play levels shown at adolescence. Play-in-Pairs scores before and after resorting were mildly correlated, indicating some level of consistency over time despite the resorting procedure. In the Social Preference test, subjects did not prefer one playfulness level over another. We conclude that a mismatch in playfulness may negatively affect social play development, and thus the welfare, of rats. Groups made of animals with similar playfulness, even those initially scoring relatively low in this trait, seemed to be more successful in establishing play relationships during adolescence.
| S-EPMC6812795 | biostudies-literature
Project description:How many pleasures can you track? In a previous study, we showed that people can simultaneously track the pleasure they experience from two images. Here, we push further, probing the individual and combined pleasures felt from seeing four images in one glimpse. Participants (N = 25) viewed 36 images spanning the entire range of pleasure. Each trial presented an array of four images, one in each quadrant of the screen, for 200 ms. On 80% of the trials, a central line cue pointed, randomly, at some screen corner either before (precue) or after (postcue) the images were shown. The cue indicated which image (the target) to rate while ignoring the others (distractors). On the other 20% of trials, an X cue requested a rating of the combined pleasure of all four images. Later, for baseline reference, we obtained a single-pleasure rating for each image shown alone. When precued, participants faithfully reported the pleasure of the target. When postcued, however, the mean ratings of images that are intensely pleasurable when seen alone (pleasure >4.5 on a 1-9 scale) dropped below baseline. Regardless of cue timing, the rating of the combined pleasure of four images was a linear transform of the average baseline pleasures of all four images. Thus, while people can faithfully track two pleasures, they cannot track four. Instead, the pleasure of otherwise above-medium-pleasure images is diminished, mimicking the effect of a distracting task.
| S-EPMC8049891 | biostudies-literature
Project description:At the beginning of psychology, Fechner (1876) claimed that beauty is immediate pleasure, and that an object's pleasure determines its value. In our earlier work, we found that intense pleasure always results in intense beauty. Here, we focus on the inverse: Is intense pleasure necessary for intense beauty? If so, the inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia) should prevent the experience of intense beauty. We asked 757 online participants to rate how intensely they felt beauty from each image. We used 900 OASIS images along with their available valence (pleasure vs. displeasure) and arousal ratings. We then obtained self-reports of anhedonia (TEPS), mood, and depression (PHQ-9). Across images, beauty ratings were closely related to pleasure ratings (r = 0.75), yet unrelated to arousal ratings. Only images with an average pleasure rating above 4 (of a possible 7) often achieved (>10%) beauty averages exceeding the overall median beauty. For normally beautiful images (average rating > 4.5), the beauty ratings were correlated with anhedonia (r ∼-0.3) and mood (r ∼ 0.3), yet unrelated to depression. Comparing each participant's average beauty rating to the overall median (5.0), none of the most anhedonic participants exceeded the median, whereas 50% of the remaining participants did. Thus, both general and anhedonic results support the claim that intense beauty requires intense pleasure. In addition, follow-up repeated measures showed that shared taste contributed 19% to beauty-rating variance, only one third as much as personal taste (58%). Addressing age-old questions, these results indicate that beauty is a kind of pleasure, and that beauty is more personal than universal, i.e., 1.7 times more correlated with individual than with shared taste.
| S-EPMC6848232 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThis study explores the role of pleasure in decision making.ResultsIn Experiment 1, 12 subjects were presented with a questionnaire containing 46 items taken from the literature. Twenty-three items described a situation where a decision should be made and ended with a suggested solution. The other items served as filler items. The subjects were requested not to make a decision but to rate the pleasure or displeasure they experienced when reading the situation described in the item. The subjects' ratings were then compared to the decisions on the same situations made by the other subjects of the studies published by other workers. The ratings of pleasure/displeasure given by our subjects correlated significantly with the choices published by other authors. This result satisfies a necessary condition for pleasure to be the key of the decision making process in theoretical situations. In Experiment 2, a new group of 12 subjects rated their experience of pleasure/displeasure when reading various versions of 50 situations taken from daily life where an ethical decision had to be made (Questionnaire I) including 200 items. This was followed by a multiple-choice test with the 50 situations (Questionnaire II) using the same 200 items and offering the various behaviors. Subjects tended to choose ethical and unethical responses corresponding to their highest pleasure rating within each problem. In all cases the subjects' behavior was higher than chance level, and thus, followed the trend to maximize pleasure. In Experiment 3, 12 subjects reading 50 mathematical short problems followed by correct and incorrect versions of the answer to the problem (Questionnaire III), including 200 items. This was followed by a multiple-choice mathematical test with the 50 problems (Questionnaire IV) using the same 200 items and offering the correct and incorrect answers. In questionnaire IV, subjects tended to choose correct as well as incorrect responses corresponding to their highest hedonic rating within each problem. In all cases the subjects' behavior was higher than chance level, and thus, followed the trend to maximize pleasure.ConclusionsThe results of the three experiments support the hypothesis according to which decisions are made in the hedonic dimension of conscious experience.
| S-EPMC116425 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The development of scales and questionnaires to assess pleasure perception has gained prominence, particularly for evaluating anhedonia in mental disorders. The Food Pleasure Scale is a comprehensive tool exclusively dedicated to measuring pleasure perception from food and food-related experiences. This study aimed to evaluate the face validity and consistency reliability of the Food Pleasure Scale using a mixed methods approach. Twenty-two participants completed the Food Pleasure Scale questionnaire and participated in in-depth interviews to understand their interpretation of the scale items. The interview data underwent thematic analysis, and the quantitative survey data was compared to the qualitative interview responses. Results indicated a high level of understanding of all items in the Food Pleasure Scale, confirming its face validity and applicability. The mixed methods approach supported the consistency reliability, showing consistency between quantitative measures and participants' explicit and implicit expressions of food pleasure. Furthermore, the study revealed a novel aspect related to food pleasure: the concept of "making an effort". Overall, this study highlights the comprehensibility, validity, and potential of the Food Pleasure Scale in consumer studies. It effectively captures the subjective experience of pleasure derived from food and food-related encounters, making it a valuable tool for further research in this domain.
| S-EPMC10855913 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous research suggests integrating pleasure into HIV prevention programming improves health outcomes. There are no existing reviews on how exactly pleasure is used within HIV public communications campaigns (PCCs). This manuscript investigates: (1) how HIV PCCs operationalise pleasure; and (2) the efficacy of pleasure-based HIV PCCs. EMBASE, Web of Science Core Collection and PsycINFO were searched for articles that present pleasure-based HIV PCCs on 13/12/2023 (PROSPERO ID: CRD42023487275) with no language restrictions. A narrative synthesis on pleasure operationalisation centred around three inductively coded categories: Enjoyment, Emotional Connection and Empowerment. Another narrative synthesis summarised efficacy data around six categories of HIV-related outcomes. 19,238 articles were retrieved, with 47 articles included in analysis, describing 29 campaigns. 65.5% of interventions operationalised Empowerment, 48.3% Enjoyment, and 31.0% Emotional Connection, with narrative synthesis highlighting the diverse ways this was achieved across target communities. An analysis of efficacy identified heterogeneous outcome reporting with inconsistent results across studies, but important outcomes, such as stigma reduction and condom use, were positively associated with intervention exposure across all relevant interventions. We highlight a range of mechanisms through which pleasure can be operationalised, which should inform future intervention development, even if the extant literature weakly supports the efficacy of such interventions.
| S-EPMC11892838 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Dancing emphasizes the motor expression of emotional experiences. The bodily expression of emotions can modulate the subjective experience of emotions, as when adopting emotion-specific postures and faces. Thus, dancing potentially offers a ground for emotional coping through emotional enhancement and regulation. Here we investigated the emotional responses to music in individuals without any prior dance training while they either freely danced or refrained from movement. Participants were also tested while imitating their own dance movements but in the absence of music as a control condition. Emotional ratings and cardio-respiratory measures were collected following each condition. Dance movements were recorded using motion capture. We found that emotional valence was increased specifically during spontaneous dance of groovy excerpts, compared to both still listening and motor imitation. Furthermore, parasympathetic-related heart rate variability (HRV) increased during dance compared to motor imitation. Nevertheless, subjective and physiological arousal increased during movement production, regardless of whether participants were dancing or imitating. Significant correlations were found between inter-individual differences in the emotions experienced during dance and whole-body acceleration profiles. The combination of movement and music during dance results in a distinct state characterized by acutely heightened pleasure, which is of potential interest for the use of dance in therapeutic settings.
| S-EPMC5712678 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic created high levels of stress that negatively affect mental health and well-being. The stress and coping process is influenced by individual difference factors, such as personality, that impact perceptual processes and emotional reactions. Adult playfulness is a personality characteristic that may lead to better mental and physical health outcomes. We test a theoretical model to determine whether the two factors of perceived stress, perceived self-efficacy (PSE) and perceived helplessness (PH), mediate the relationship among playfulness and coping in adults (N = 694). Scores on the Perceived Stress Scale were high indicating high levels of pandemic-related stress. The SEM model demonstrated direct effects of playfulness on PSE, PH, adaptive, maladaptive, and supportive coping. Both dimensions of perceived stress were partial mediators in the relationship among playfulness and coping outcomes. Findings illustrate the pathways by which adult playfulness can amplify or attenuate the impact of stress perceptions on coping strategies. The importance of building psychological resources such as playfulness to boost adaptive outcomes in stressful situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic is discussed.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-02870-0.
| S-EPMC8860462 | biostudies-literature