Fun isn’t easy: Children selectively manipulate task difficulty when “playing for fun” vs. “playing to win”

Play is important in many cultures and species, but the basic motivations behind play remain unclear. In two preregistered experiments, we presented 5-to-10-year-old children (n = 124) with a novel game. We compared their choices about how to best configure the game when either playing for fun or playing to win, exploring: 1) how sensitive children are to the factors that are most relevant for playing to win; and 2) how their preferences when playing for fun relates to their preferences when playing to win. We found that for “win-relevant” features, children chose easier settings when playing to win than when playing for fun. By contrast, for “win-irrelevant” features, children generally preferred similar settings across conditions. Children also judged “win-relevant” factors as more important to winning than “win-irrelevant” factors, and judged both as irrelevant to having fun. These results suggest that playing to win and playing for fun are distinct motivational contexts to which children can appropriately adapt their decisions during play.