'Free play' for children, teens is vital to social development, reports BC psychologist

Gray's article addresses not just children's play, but also play as a fundamental component of adult human nature, which allowed humans to develop as intensely social and cooperative beings. Through the course of his research, he said, it became increasingly apparent that play and humor lay at the core of hunter-gatherer social structures and mores.

Hunter-gatherers used humor, deliberately, to maintain equality and stop quarrels, according to Gray, and their means of sharing had game-like qualities. Their religious beliefs and ceremonies were playful, founded on assumptions of equality, humor, and capriciousness among the deities. They maintained playful attitudes in their hunting, gathering, and other sustenance activities, partly by allowing each person to choose when, how, and how much they would engage in such activities.

"Professor Gray's novel insight sheds new light on the question of how such societies can maintain social harmony and cooperation while emphasizing the autonomy of individuals," said Kirk M. Endicott, a leading anthropologist and hunter-gatherer expert at Dartmouth College. "Conversely, his demonstration of the wide-ranging role of play in hunter-gatherer societies focuses attention on the importance of play in the evolutionary success of the human species."

Peter Gray has been a professor of psychology at Boston College for more than 35 years. In 2002 he retired from the position of full professor and assumed the position of research professor. He is the author of "Psychology," a widely-used psychology textbook now in its 5th edition, and has published a number of scholarly articles on the role of play in education. In addition, he writes a regular blog for Psychology Today magazine, "Freedom to Learn" (http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn).

He frequently speaks on play and education at national conferences and university colloquia, and is currently one of seven members of a nation-wide think tank on improving education through the lens of an evolutionary perspective.

The article is published in the Spring 2009 edition of the American Journal of Play, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary quarterly published through the University of Illinois Press that aims to increase awareness and understanding of the role of play in learning and human development and of the ways in which play illuminates cultural history. More information is available at www.americanjournalofplay.org.