Essay: Importance of play for brain development, morals, value and beliefs

It’s possible for most people to remember a time when they were young and played pretend. The activity may seem insignificant in hindsight but, in reality, it is necessary for proper brain development and can even shape more complex things like morals, value and beliefs. This concept of play has been around since the beginning of time. Even so, only within the past few centuries has the corporate world started to capitalize on play activities in order to birth the field of Parks and Recreation Management.
According to Merriam-Webster’s website, play is defined as “to do activities for fun and enjoyment” (“Play”). This very broad definition is precisely the reason that play has existed since the dawn of humanity. Anything can be play if you believe it to be play. Dr. Gregory Berns even claims that when he normally asks students about their pleasurable activities, they answer with an activity based on needs first like sleep or eating (AP). Just because play can be abstract to the point of meeting basic needs doesn’t mean that it always is, however. Sometimes play can be watching a tv show, going on a bike ride, or mixing up a stirfry. None of these are necessary for survival like the aforementioned play activities, but they are equally proponents of play and leisure culture. Based on this definition of play, it has existed since the creation of mankind.
The first instance of play was recorded in the Ancient Greek Empire around 800-500 BC (Schoolworkhelper Editorial Team). The Ancient Greeks took part in a copious amount of activities that are a part of the Parks and Recreation field as it stands today. These activities include, but are not limited to hunting, fishing, dice, and ball games. They even created the Olympic Games in 776 BC (Welcome to the Ancient Olympic Games, 2018). The Olympic Games are a series of “sports” events in order to determine a champion that is supposed to be the best at what they do. Though the events have evolved many centuries later, the Olympics would not be what they are today without the foundation set by the Ancient Greeks. After a great number of years and civilization progression, in the late 1880s and early 1900s, the United States of America began to recognize play’s importance in human development and happiness and in turn created opportunities in the Parks and Recreation Management field for all sorts of leisure.
At first, the Parks and Recreation Management industry was very sporadic and unpredictable. It was not a commonly discussed topic to regulate the Recreation industry so it was rather freelance at first. But like most great things, too much can be a problem. In order to combat this, in 1907, members of the leisure industry met in Washington DC to establish the Playground Association of America (Hansan, 2013). This allowed cities to have access to playgrounds and streamlined the process for people to obtain jobs in the leisure industry as it was slowly becoming more commercially viable. In only four years following the founding of the association, 83 cities having community recreation leadership had reached 680 (Hansan, 2013). The exponential increase only continued as the Playground Association of America continued to meet and progress the development of the leisure industry.
Parks and Recreation really exploded with the founding of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and the youth group programs YMCA and YWCA. This, however, was only the beginning. Later, other programs like Outward Bound and National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) came into the scene and allowed older crowds to pursue a future in giving outdoor experiences to others.
Clearly it seems as though the general American public agrees that recreation and leisure are very important to everyday human development. This is why I decided that I wanted to draw connections between the fields of Parks and Recreation Management and Psychology. If someone has problems with emotional health, is it possible to help them through exposure to outdoor leisure experiences? This is a study that I would love to conduct and have begun to propose due to my major in Parks and Recreation Management and my minor in Psychology. The two cross paths in a unique but quite nice way.
In recent times, there has been a surge of growth in two very seemingly unrelated industries: Outdoor Pursuits and Medicine. Both surely have their merits and their downfalls, but Outdoor Pursuits have very recently become more researched in the psychological community and it appears that it may have a significant impact on mental and emotional health and not pose the risk of extreme side effects that drugs may elicit. The study I plan to propose aims to explain phenomena directly related to emotional health in the situation. Subjects in the study will either be exposed to outdoor leisure or not be exposed to outdoor leisure and will be tested after to determine prevalence of strong emotional health, self-perceived happiness, and quantity of emotional outbreaks. I believe that exposure to outdoor leisure experiences could potentially increase strong emotional health and levels of self-perceived happiness while decreasing the amount of negative emotional outbreaks the subjects experience.
The study would attempt to answer three questions: Do outdoor experiences affect prevalence of strong emotional health, do outdoor experiences affect self-perceived happiness, and is there a difference in the amount of negative emotional outbreaks before and after outdoor experiences? To do this, the study would begin with random selection of students and faculty of Western Carolina University that have volunteered the information that they have experienced negative emotional outbreaks. Thus, the sample of the study will consist of a group of 100 people over the age of eighteen that have had self reported negative emotional outbreaks. These participants will apply to take part in the study since they have reported negative emotional outbreaks. The participants will all meet for a briefing that will feature an in depth explanation of the study and the signing of the informed consent papers, also known as the waiver. Participants will proceed to complete the preliminary survey which includes the following questions: “How is your emotional health?”, “How would you rate your level of happiness?”, and “How often do you experience negative emotional outbreaks?”. The group of 100 will then be split into a control group and an experimental group. The control group continues life as normal and the experimental group goes on outdoor excursions once per week for four weeks. The activities involved include hiking, canoeing, orienteering, and high ropes courses. After all of the excursions are complete, the group of all 100 participants will come back together to take the same survey as an exit survey to gauge improvement or declination. Following this, there will be a debrief for all participants.
Why is this study important? I believe that the previously done research on the effect that outdoor experiences have on the human brain is accurate and I would love to explore the realm as well and bring a new perspective to a new group of peers.
Humans have been surrounded by nature since the beginning of time. In modern society, less and less opportunities arise for humans to connect with nature on a daily basis. Technology and industrialization are pushing humans to stay inside and emotional health problems are on the rise in the United States. This really makes one wonder, “Is nature necessary for basic human health?” Daniel E. Baxter and Luc G. Pelletier were insistent on finding the answer to this with their research just this year.
“Is Nature Relatedness a Basic Human Psychological Need?” is what Baxter and Pelletier asked. To begin their process, Baxter and Pelletier needed a definition to basic human psychological needs. Using “needs as motives” and “needs as requirements” they were able to do this. The first are needs that are pursued for motive and the latter is experienced and then processed as a requirement. To be classified in either category, a phenomena must meet a multitude of criteria. This includes affective consequences, promotion of health and well-being, consequences when thwarted, universality, and not derivative of other needs in the case of “needs as requirements” and includes direct cognitive processing, affect a variety of behaviours, occurs in a wide variety of settings, and elicit goal-directed behaviour in the case of “needs as motives”.  Through their research they were able to determine that nature relatedness was a part of the “needs as requirements” category and had a direct impact on the health of an individual because it met all of these requirements. (Baxter and Pelletier). If nature relatedness is a basic human psychological need, it would absolutely have an impact on everyday human life depending on its presence or absence.
A study conducted by Patricia Martin and Eric Brymer takes this down a different avenue. Martin and Brymer tested to find a relationship between nature relatedness and anxiety. Instead of introducing a factor of nature, they simply surveyed 305 students with quantitative and qualitative questions about the relationship to nature that each student has and their levels of anxiety. After the surveys were administered, it was determined that there was a strong positive correlation between nature relatedness and absence of anxiety. In the quantitative results, “connection to nature was significantly related to lower levels of overall, state cognitive and trait cognitive anxiety” (Martin and Brymer). In the qualitative results, there were “seven themes: relaxation, time out, enjoyment, connection, expanse, sensory engagement and a healthy perspective” (Martin and Brymer). Together, these results strongly suggest that nature relatedness correlates to the lessening of anxiety.
If nature has this effect, it is possible that it can be used as treatment. That is what Craig L. Anderson, Maria Monroy, and Dacher Keltner set out to uncover. In their double study, “Awe in Nature Heals: Evidence From Military Veterans, At-Risk Youth, and College Students” Anderson et al tested the effects of awe in nature in white water rafting and in general everyday outdoor experience. The first study saw 124 military veterans and youth go on a 1 day or 4 day white water rafting trek. After the trek, when the participants were polled there were noticeable “improvements in well-being and stress-related symptoms, above and beyond the effects of other positive emotions” (Anderson et al). The second study involved the 119 involved participants keeping diaries over the course of a Psychology “class” that they received credit for. They journaled how nature affected their emotional well being over the course of 14 consecutive days. In the results of this study, it was found that “as students navigate the academic and social demands of a busy semester, daily doses of nature elicit awe and improve well-being, above and beyond the effects of other positive emotions” (Anderson et al). Together, their studies showed that awe in nature greatly affects well being and that there is an emotion that makes the outdoors truly affect emotional health.
Another study by Monica Soliman, Johanna Peetz, and Mariya Davydenko explores the use of immersive technology to see if it can help with nature relatedness and pro-environmental behavior. They subjected their test groups to a desktop video or an immersive technology video about nature and their control group was subjected to a video of a built environment. Then the groups were asked to answer questions about their attitude toward nature. In the end, it was determined that the groups that watched the nature video had significantly higher levels of nature relatedness than the group that watched the built environment, with the screen type not causing any statistically significant variation (Soliman et al). This could potentially allow for nature related treatments with the use of technology if the opportunity to go outside is not feasible and could add to the availability of nature relatedness psychological treatments.
Finally, a study conducted by Jacqueline M. Swank, Christopher Cheung, Alena Prikhidko, and Yi-Wen Su called “Nature-Based Child-Centered Group Play Therapy and Behavioral Concerns: A Single-Case Design” explored group play in nature and how it can treat children with behavioral concerns. The study involved 5 children, 3 of which received the Group Play Therapy. These children were subjected to intense 30 minute play therapy sessions on a daily basis and then scored on on-task behavior and overall problems. The results of this process found that the effects were debatable or fully effective in the three treated children, showing that therapy in nature can be healing and is effective for some children (Swank et al).