A cross-cultural study of young adult playfulness among university students: A comparison of China and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Scholars have extended playfulness from children and infants to adults and an increasing number of studies have been conducted to contemplate playfulness in several life domains of adults. However, most of the studies have been conducted in western societies and the global level of adult playfulness. Addressing the need for research on the eastern societies, we adopt Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory to investigate a cross-cultural study of four facets of young adult playfulness, namely Other-directed, Lighthearted, Intellectual and Whimsical in the context of Chinese culture and UK culture. The data consists of OLIW scores of three samples, Chinese university students studying in China, local students in the UK and Chinese students studying in the UK. Through the quantitative study, the findings show that cultural dimensions shed influence upon adult playfulness. Therefore, the adult playfulness in the UK is higher than that in China, while the exposure to the western culture such as in the UK does alter the adult playfulness of Chinese university students. The findings can assist teachers, course developers and policy makers to employ adult playfulness as an important feature for academic success, creativity and intrinsic motivation of Chinese university students both at local universities and abroad as means for better adjustments to different cultural contexts.