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Imaginary Worldplay in Childhood and Maturity and Its Impact on Adult Creativity

Creativity Research Journal

October 2006
18(4):405-425

DOI:10.1207/s15326934crj1804_1

Authors:

Michele Marie Root-Bernstein

Michigan State University

Robert Root-Bernstein

Michigan State University

The childhood invention of imaginary worlds or paracosms may prepare for creative endeavor in adulthood. To test hypotheses concerning the incidence of childhood worldplay and its connection to mature work, this study queried MacArthur Fellows, selected for their creativity, and compared them to Michigan State University (MSU) students. Whereas previous research declared paracosm play to be uncommon and associated with the arts, this study found it reasonably common among MSU students (3%-12%), about twice as frequent among MacArthur Fellows (5%-26%), and prevalent in the backgrounds of scientists and social scientists as well as artists. A majority of Fellows with assessed worldplay in childhood reported connections between early paracosm play and mature endeavor. Childhood worldplay deserves further study as early apprenticeship in creative imagination.

Types of Play in Positive Responses Assessed as Other Than Worldplay (Second Assortment) Among MacArthur Fellows and MSU Students MacArthur Fellows MSU Students

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Breakdown of MacArthur Fellows by Professional Fields: Sample Compared to Pool

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Imaginary Worldplay in Childhood and Maturity

and Its Impact on Adult Creativity

Michele Root-Bernstein and Robert Root-Bernstein

Michigan State University

ABSTRACT: The childhood invention of imaginary

worlds or paracosms may prepare for creative en

deavor in adulthood. To test hypotheses concerning the

incidence of childhood worldplay and its connection to

mature work, this study queried MacArthur Fellows,

selected for their creativity, and compared them to

Michigan State University (MSU) students. Whereas

previous research declared paracosm play to be un-

common and associated with the arts, this study found

it reasonably common among MSU students

(3%–12%), about twice as frequent among MacArthur

Fellows (5%–26%), and prevalent in the backgrounds

of scientists and social scientists as well as artists. A

majority of Fellows with assessed worldplay in child-

hood reported connections between early paracosm

play and mature endeavor. Childhood worldplay de-

serves further study as early apprenticeship in creative

imagination.

Ongoing discussion in the fields of psychology and cre

ativity studies concerns whether groundbreaking indi

viduals are “Jacks of all trades” or specialists (Kaufman

& Baer, 2005; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Singer, 2004).

Oneaspectofthisdebatethatmayprofitablydrawcloser

attention isthe role that general imaginativepreparation

in childhood may havefor morespecialized creativeen

deavor in adulthood. Over the last few hundred years in

the West, artists, scientists, inventors, and others have

observed that the creative adult recaptures in his or her

work process some aspect of child’s play

(Apostolos-Cappadona & Altschuler, 1994, pp. 101,

115; Clark, 1981, pp. 2, 15, 17; Cobb, 1977, p. 88 and

passim; Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Kuhl, 1999, pp. 12–13;

Remy, 1991/1991, p. 10;J. L. Singer,1973, p. 6). Others

have insisted that the individual’s personal history of

childhood play itself informs mature capacities. For ex

ample, the neuroanatomist and Nobel Prize winner,

Ramon y Cajal, argued:

The games of children are an absolutely essential preparation

for life; thanks to them the infantile brain hastens its develop

ment, receiving, according to the hobbies preferred and the

amusements carried on, a definite moral and intellectual

stamp upon which the future will largely depend. (as cited in

R. Root-Bernstein, 1989b, p. 314)

Taking our cue from observations such as these, we es-

sayed a study of creative play in childhood and its per-

ceived connections to adult innovation and invention

amongst MacArthur Fellows, a group of individuals

known for creative contribution within and across dis-

ciplines.

One of the most remarkable forms of creative play

in childhood is the invention of make-believe worlds,

often referred to in the psychological literature as

paracosms (Cohen, 1990; Cohen & MacKeith, 1991;

MacKeith, 1982–1983; Silvey, 1977; Silvey &

MacKeith, 1988; D. G. Singer & Singer, 1990, pp.

111–116; Taylor, 1999, pp. 136–141). Unlike other

forms of make-believe, worldplay, as we call it, in

volves the persistent and consistent evocation of an

imagined place (often, but not always) inhabited by

imagined people or beings. Such a world is not to be

Creativity Research Journal

2006, Vol. 18, No. 4, 405–425

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Creativity Research Journal 405

The authors wish to acknowledge and thank the MacArthur Fellows

who responded to inquiries about worldplay, the students at Michi

gan State University (MSU) who did the same and the colleagues at

MSU who made that possible. This article is based in part on a pre

sentation to the American Psychological Association Symposium on

Domain-Specificity Versus Domain-Generality in Creativity, held in

August of 2004.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to

Michele Root-Bernstein, 720 Gainsborough Drive, East Lansing, MI

48823. E-mail: rootber3@msu.edu

confused with the disturbing fantasies of some psy

chotic children and teens (Green, 1964; Lindner, 1955,

pp. 221–293), but belongs to normally developing chil

dren who distinguish between what they imagine and

what really exists (Cohen & MacKeith, 1991, p. 14;

Silvey & MacKeith, 1988, pp. 173–174). However,

whether they play in an imaginary land with several in

timates or by themselves, the make-believe does not

wisp away at the end of the day. The imagined world

organically builds over months, sometimes years; it ac

cumulates behind-the-scenes narratives, geographies,

cultures, social and political institutions, and even eco

systems. Indeed, children who create make-believe

worlds frequently do so in ways that are materially in

ventive. They document what is playfully imagined by

composing alphabets and languages, writing down sto

ries and histories, or drawing pictures and maps. Such

documentation may, in fact, be regarded as a sine qua

non for worldplay in its most recognizable guise, thus

differentiating it from other forms of creative play in

volving imaginative reenactment, imaginary friends,

or daydreams (Cohen & MacKeith, 1991, pp.

107–111; J. L. Singer, 1973, 1975; Taylor, 1999).

At present, researchers in psychology and creativ-

ity studies know a bit about childhood worldplay and

almost nothing of its bearing on creativity, whether

juvenile or adult. In 1988, Silvey (posthumous) and

MacKeith catalogued 64 paracosms described by 57

adults who had responded to Silvey’s (1977) pub-

lished appeals soliciting personal experiences with

worldplay. In the same article, they compiled a list of

15 paracosms described in published autobiographies

and memoirs. Cohen and MacKeith (1991) later

placed Silvey’s sample of paracosms in a context of

psychological and creative development. The re

searchers shed light on paracosm play in two ways:

first, by establishing its developmental profile; sec

ond, by categorizing its forms and contents.

Judging by the interview materials received from

their 57 respondents, Silvey and MacKeith (1988) and

Cohen and MacKeith (1991) argued that the invention

of imaginary worlds typically peaks around the age of

9, continues for some months or years, and then fades

by the late teenage years. They also discerned five typi

cal content categories: paracosms based on or invoking

fantasy play with (a) toys; (b) particular places and lo

cal communities; (c) imagined islands, countries, and

their peoples; (d) imagined systems, documents, and

languages; and (e) unstructured, idyllic worlds. Some

of their data appeared to indicate that as world-invent

ing children matured, their focus tended to shift from

the personal intimacy of toy families to the social inter

actions of larger establishments, thence to the increas

ingly abstract cultural, economic, and political systems

that characterize society at large. Two out of three girls

in the sample continued to focus on the personal inter

actions of characters, whereas most boys focused on

systems, bureaucracies, or histories with little emo

tional content. Therefore, although paracosms in

vented by boys and girls were nearly equal in number,

those that modeled the real world, with minimal inter

est in personal life, predominated (Silvey & MacKeith,

1988, p. 186).

The paracosm materials collected by Silvey and

MacKeith (1988) were eminently suited to characteriz

ing worldplay but not to ascertaining its incidence, re

lation to subsequent profession, or functionality as

preparation for creative work. Despite a lack of rele

vant data, the researchers nonetheless surmised that the

invention of imaginary worlds was “uncommon” in

early or late childhood and “very uncommon” in teen-

age years (Cohen & MacKeith, 1991, p. 111;

MacKeith, 1982–1983, p. 265; Silvey & MacKeith,

1988, p. 175). They also argued that the invention of

imaginary worlds appealed to “dreamy” types with an

affinity for the arts; a point seemingly confirmed by the

preponderance of well-known writers and artists on

their supplemental list of published worldplay recol-

lections. Paradoxically, the relative absence of adult

careers in the arts among their 57 paracosmists led Co

hen and MacKeith (1991) to conclude that worldplay

did not sustain or enhance creative potential in the av

erage individual, but rather steered make-believe away

from the fantasy of play toward something “more like

work” (pp. 53, 103–104). Overall, they built a case for

a fascinating, if somewhat disappointing, byway in the

development of ordinary imagination (Cohen &

MacKeith, 1991, p. 22).

These conclusions may be questioned. By their own

admissions, Silvey and MacKeith (1988) and Cohen

and MacKeith (1991) did not investigate potential rates

of worldplay in either a general or an artistic (or other

wise creative) population. Neither did they formalize

the actual distribution of adult professional activity

amongst their sample of paracosmists or discuss in any

systematic way perceived connections between imagi

native endeavors in childhood and adulthood. More

over, their assumption that worldplay often strangled

406 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

the imagination prematurely limited potential investi

gation of imaginative skill sets that may have been ac

quired in worldplay.

Based on our previous research on play, avocations,

and creativity (R. Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, &

Garnier, 1995; R. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein,

1999, 2004), we made a number of alternative hypoth

eses concerning the incidence, appeal, and effect of

worldplay. First, we hypothesized that highly creative

individuals would be more apt to have invented worlds

in childhood than individuals in a general population;

second, individuals with childhood worldplay would

work in a diverse range of disciplines across the arts

and sciences; and third, these individuals would find

play, especially worldplay, important to adult endeavor

and would perceive connections between childhood

play and adult work. As a corollary to all three hypoth

eses, we also supposed that the long-term advantages

of childhood worldplay would involve early practice

navigating the creative process.

To testthese hypotheses, we queriedMacArthur Fel-

lows, a group of highly successful individuals selected

by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

for extraordinary originality and exceptional promise.

In a professional, private vetting process, MacArthur

Fellowsare anonymously nominated from a wide range

of disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, arts, hu-

manities, and public affairs professions. We compared

these Fellowsto a control group of students enrolled in a

variety of courses at Michigan State University (MSU).

Theentrance level forthis large,land-grant institution is

moderately difficult (on average, students score be

tween 1,040 and 1,260 [combined scores] on the Scho

lastic Achievement Test), and the student body, at least

incomparisonwiththeMacArthurFellows,representsa

population of individuals selected for ordinary achieve

ment. Therefore, we expected to establish rates of

paracosm invention in both a general and a creativepop

ulation, determine the subsequent career plans or paths

of those who had invented paracosms as children, and

tease out any perceived connections respondents might

entertain between childhood worldplay and adult cre

ative endeavor.

Method

In February of 2002, we prepared a short query

about the invention of imaginary worlds to send to

MacArthur Fellows (see Appendix A). Section I asked

Fellows to briefly describe their work, their hobbies,

and any childhood play they considered relevant to ei

ther. Section II asked whether the Fellow had invented

an imaginary world in childhood. Section III asked

whether imaginary worlds in the arts, humanities, and

sciences remained important to them as adults. This

section did not suppose a childhood experience with

worldplay, although those individuals who felt they in

vented worlds both as children and as adults were addi

tionally able to address whether they saw some con

nection between the two. All surveys were to be

considered anonymous, and all remarks were kept con

fidential unless Fellows indicated otherwise.

Ninety percent of individuals given MacArthur

awards from 1981 through 2001, or 505 individuals,

were contacted by e-mail and by post. After a lapse of

some time, the process was repeated for those Fellows

who had not responded. Out of 505 contacts, 106 re

sponses made for a one-fifth response rate.

In the spring and fall of 2003, eight classrooms in

the sciences, humanities, arts, and general education

departments at MSU were also polled. Students were

given the opportunity to fill out an anonymous query

like that sent to the MacArthur Fellows; however, in-

stead of professional affiliation, they were asked to list

future career plans. Based on enrollment data, approxi-

mately 1,000 students attended the polled classrooms;

about 1 in 5, or 262, completed the questionnaire.

Certain disparities may have affected thoroughness

of response. Due to the in-class setting of the query, stu

dents had approximately 10 to 15 min to reflect and re

spond to query questions, whereas Fellows devoted

self-determined amounts of time to formulating their

answers. Age differences between the two populations

may also have affected responses. MacArthur Fellows

includedindividualsbornin eachdecade spanning 1920

to 1960; at the time of query, over one half were aged in

their 50s and 60s. In contrast, nearly all students were

born in the early 1980s; no more than a handful were

born in the 1970s or the 1960s. We considered the possi

bility that students, closer in years to childhood play,

might have had more accessible memories of early

worldplay and that Fellows, further advanced in years,

mighthavehadless accessiblerecall ofchildhood world

invention. However, the observation by previous re

searchers that childhood worldplay held long-term sig

nificanceforindividualswellintoadulthoodarguedthat

thispossibleeffectofagedifferencewouldbemitigated.

Creativity Research Journal 407

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

Preliminary evaluation of responses revealed that

many of the positive reports of worldplay by MacAr

thur Fellows and MSU students were “false positives.”

This may have been due to priming by the query itself,

which had been designed to solicit from respondents a

conscious commentary on their experiences with play

as children and as adults. Respondents described play

of many sorts as involving the invention of imaginary

worlds whether or not that play fit the definition sup

plied in the query. Fellows and students described a

great deal of make-believe reverie (daydreams) and en

acted make-believe (sociodramatic) play in addition to

constructed make-believe, wherein paracosm play

might be said to typically fall, at least when it com

prises the crafting of props, models, or other docu

ments of play (Cohen & MacKeith, 1991, pp. 110–111;

Piaget, 1946/1962, pp. 110–113). Cohen and

MacKeith included some play-acting games, day

dream fantasies, and modeling games within their

paracosm sample as well as the more distinct kind of

worldplay involving the material elaboration of stories,

drawings, maps, or histories. They did so as long as

three basic criteria were met: play persisted over

weeks, months, or years; it elaborated a consistently

conceived place; and it “mattered,” that is to say, was

personally important to the child (Cohen & MacKeith,

1991, p. 14; Silvey & MacKeith, 1988, p. 174). We also

found it necessary to apply these criteria to the query

responses to assess positive self-reports for recogniz-

able (definitional) worldplay. (In addition, previous re-

searchers had required that the child distinguish be

tween imagined and real worlds, to restrict their study

to a normal imagination. We did not apply this criteria

in assessment, assuming—for the purposes of this

study—that successful adults and functioning college

students made adequate distinctions between reality,

on the one hand, and fantasy or conjecture, on the

other.)

Based on criteria established by Silvey and

MacKeith (1988) and Cohen and MacKeith (1991), we

devised a checklist or rubric (see Appendix B). We also

looked for evidence that the world in question actually

involved imaginary dimensions (i.e., imagined places

and, possibly, imagined people) beyond the “here and

now” of playacting; that those imaginary dimensions

were conceived in some detail rather than none (spe

cific vs. general notions of place or persons); and that

the play was private or intimately shared, rather than

public. In addition, we looked for evidence that respon

dents had documented their worlds with written sto

ries, maps, drawings, or other artifacts. These extended

criteria allowed distinctions to be made between

worldplay and common sociodramatic play. It also al

lowed us to accept as imaginary worlds a couple of re

ported instances of imaginary friends, when these

friends inhabited a fully conceived place. One Fellow

who “talked Jenny” with an imaginary friend eventu

ally elaborated a complete society of “woods-girls”

whose adventures she recorded in pictures and stories.

Evaluating self-reports of worldplay was not an “ei

ther–or” proposition. Imaginary worlds, as recalled

and described, were more or less persistent and more or

less consistent. Some children played “dolls,” whereas

others played “Dollyland.” Some continually repeated

invariant scenarios; others continuously returned to

evolving ones. Imaginative play rarely met all criteria

for the invention of imaginary worlds. For instance,

one imaginary town and one imaginary zoo, both rec

reated day after day and dismantled at night to make

room for family activities, were certainly persistent but

weak in consistency and specificity. The stories, char-

acters, and even the settings changed daily, although

they occupied the same imaginary play space.

Faced with this kind of polymorphous play experi-

ence, we used the rubric to establish a profile for each

self-reported world. Some traits were required; others

were corroborative. In its final form, the rubric estab-

lished a checklist for imaginary worldplay or paracosm

play that (a) required the notion of a specific “other”

place, either partly or wholly imaginary; that (b) might

include the notion of specific persons, either partly or

wholly imaginary; and that (c) must include the consis

tent repetition over some period of time of a specific

scenario, as evidenced by the naming of places and

characters or the elaboration of a continuous narrative

or other systematization. In ambiguous cases, we

looked for indication that the play had been private or

intimately shared as opposed to communally practiced.

This and other evidence of the child’s creative control

helped tip the balance toward worldplay. Internal con

sistency of assessment across the two data samples was

achieved by a repetition of review by a single evalua

tor; no attempt was made otherwise to determine the

reliability of the rubric.

In this manner, positive responses to worldplay by

MacArthur Fellows and MSU students were catego

rized into two groups: researcher-assessed worldplay

and researcher-assessed nonworldplay. Initially, a third

408 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

group was also included—researcher-assessed ambig

uous. We sorted the data in two ways. The first, more

stringent assortment did not include ambiguous cases;

the second, more relaxed assortment incorporated the

assignment of ambiguous cases into the other two

groups. As it turned out, both assortments generated

similar profiles for Fellows and for MSU students, es

pecially when the two sample groups were compared

to each other.

The researcher-assessed data were evaluated for in

cidence of childhood worldplay in the two sample pop

ulations and its distribution across current or intended

professional endeavors. In addition, the two sample

populations were compared using a chi-squared analy

sis (assuming the student population to represent the

“expected” distribution) to evaluate the significance of

the results. Finally, self-reported connections between

worldplay and adult creative endeavor were evaluated

to confirm and interpret the statistical findings.

Results

To address our first hypothesis that highly creative

individuals would be more likely than others to have

invented worlds in childhood, we considered the fol-

lowing data.

Of the 106 responses, 16 Fellows declined partici-

pation; some cited personal discretion or protection of

current creative inspiration. “This cuts too close to

home,” wrote one Fellow. Another wrote, “Sacred ter

ritory, … these are subjects I prefer not to discuss for

fear of disturbing the muse the wrong way!” Others

cited lack of time or interest. Ninety applicable re

sponses remained. Of these self-reports, 39 individuals

(43%) indicated that they did invent imaginary worlds

in childhood; 51 (57%) indicated they did not (see Ta

ble 1).

The responses were reevaluated according to the ru

bric. Of the 39 self-reports of worldplay among Mac

Arthur Fellows, only 18 qualified as recognizable in

stances of imagined world invention in the first,

stringent assortment; 23 in the second, relaxed assort

ment that included ambiguous cases. In the first, strin

gent assortment, worldplay examples included the

model city, “rather Incaic in its conception,” that one

Fellow built out of small stones in the woods near his

home when he was around 9 years old. The city had in

stitutions and a history. In the second, relaxed assort

ment, acceptable examples included the genealogical

records kept by another Fellow for “a cast of imaginary

characters” whose adventures in the “real world” had

“evolving histories.”

In that second, relaxed assortment, the remaining 16

nonworldplay responses described related make-be-

lieve, typified by the ephemeral play world reported by

one Fellow who “rampaged around the woods [with a

friend] pretending to be Indians”; the book worlds de-

scribed by another Fellow as “entirely derivative of

what I was reading—voraciously—at the time—fairy

tales, Mary Poppins, ‘Greek myths,’ ‘girl nurse/detec-

tive/orphan/whatever’ stories”; the invented game

“built of elaborate models and ‘set-ups’” of World War

II scenarios with “very complex war-gaming rules” de-

scribed by yet another; and two very different forms of

imaginative play that involved animistic communion

with nature: “I felt that all things, animate and inani

mate spoke to me, if I was quiet and patient enough,”

Creativity Research Journal 409

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

Table 1. Survey Results for MacArthur Fellows and MSU Students

MacArthur Fellows MSU Students

Responses 106 262

Nonapplicable 16

Self-reports: Yes 39 43%

105 40%

Self-reports: No 51 157

Applicable total 90 262

Assort 1: Recognizable worldplay 18 20%

29 11%

A 1: Not worldplay 12 68

A 1: Ambiguous 9 8

Assort 2

: Recognizable worldplay 23 25.5%

32 12%

A 2

: Not worldplay 16 73

Note. MSU = Michigan State University.

Ambiguous responses distributed into “recognizable worldplay” and “not worldplay” categories.

Percentage of applicable total.

wrote a Fellow. “Especially trees, but also sticks,

clouds, rocks, any and everything, even bottle caps or

toys.” (See Table 2.)

Given the number of cases in both first and second

assortments, the invention of imaginary worlds among

the applicable sample group of 90 Fellows lay between

20% and 26%. It remains unknown whether the 400

MacArthur Fellows who did not respond to the query

invented imaginary worlds in the same, greater, or

lesser numbers. Nevertheless, we felt it possible, based

on the sample, to establish a reasonable range for the

incidence of worldplay among this group of innovative

individuals. If we assumed, on the one hand, that the

one-fifth sample fairly represented the whole, 26%

might be a maximum proportion of MacArthur Fel

lows who engaged in the childhood invention of imagi

nary worlds. If we assumed, on the other hand, that the

23 individuals represented all MacArthur Fellows with

this childhood experience, then 5% of all Fellows in

vented worlds in childhood. The reality is presumably

between 5% and 26%.

Of 262 responses received from MSU students, 105

responses (40%) answered yes to worldplay in child-

hood; 157 (60%) answered no. (See Table 1.) The

self-reported positive response rate was thus 40%,

which is similar to the 43% self-reported positive re-

sponse rate of MacArthur Fellows. (See Table 1.)

These self-reports were assessed using the rubric. Due

perhaps to the anonymous nature of the student query,

to student age, or to the lack of a cover letter or cover

introduction to worldplay in participating classrooms,

the rate of false positives was much higher among stu

dents than among Fellows.

Seventy-three positive student responses actually

described sociodramatic play, make-believe borrowed

from book and entertainment narratives, imaginary

companions, ephemeral daydreams or bedtime stories

in the absence of a consistent imagined place (a cate

gory that did not appear in the MacArthur sample), lan

guage games in the absence of an imaginary world, and

disparate and irrelevant forms of play. (See Table 2.)

Such responses reported, for example, a favorite play

space behind the sofa, play in the trees in imitation of

the Berenstain Bears™, an imaginary family that lived

in the garage, daydreams of being an alien sent to earth

(based on the television show, “Mork and Mindy”;

Marshall, 1978–1982), pretended communication with

trees and animals, and a “gorilla game” in which, by

climbing, the child “evolved from small monkey to a

chimp … to a gorilla.” None of these positive responses

involved the invention of paracosms.

Others did. These included the invented land of

“Mystica,” inhabited by people and other creatures and

replete with maps and histories. They also included a

“rainbow house” where the child “lived with imaginary

animals and cartoons I loved” and bed stories woven

around people who “lived in the clouds and at night

would come into your dreams.” In the first, stringent

assortment, 29 students provided evidence of such rec-

ognizable worldplay, with 8 students providing ambig-

uous evidence. In the second, relaxed assortment, 3 of

those ambiguous play experiences were reassigned to

recognizable worldplay. Therefore, at a maximum, 32

students had invented imaginary worlds in childhood.

The incidence range of researcher-assessed worldplay

in the student responders was thus 11% to 12%. (See

Table 1.) Once again, if we assume that responders are

typical of all students, then 11% to 12% represents the

maximum rate of worldplay in that general population.

If we assume that all students who participated in

410 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

Table 2. Types of Play in Positive Responses Assessed as Other Than Worldplay (Second Assortment) Among MacArthur

Fellows and MSU Students

MacArthur Fellows MSU Students

General play worlds 10 37

Book, film, or TV worlds 1 6

Imaginary companions 2 9

Daydreams/bedtime stories 3

Invented games 1

Language games 4

Other 2 14

Total 16 73

Note. MSU = Michigan State University.

worldplay responded to the questionnaire, then the rate

for all students in the sample is a minimum of 3%.

A comparison of incidence rates for the MacArthur

and student samples reveals an obvious discrepancy

between the two populations. Although students and

Fellows self-reported worldplay at a similar rate, the

actual incidence of researcher-assessed worldplay

amongst Fellows (5%–26%) was about twice that

amongst students (3%–12%), whether stringent or re

laxed criteria, minimum or maximum data were used.

As a means of addressing our second hypothesis,

that individuals who invented imagined worlds in

childhood would be apt to work in a wide range of pro

fessions, we also looked at what kind of professions

occupied worldplaying MacArthur Fellows in their

maturity and compared these to the professions that

MSU students who invented worlds in childhood fore

saw for themselves. Innovative individuals often cross

disciplinary boundaries in their work (Feist, 2004, p.

74; Hjerter, 1986; Plucker & Beghetto, 2004, pp.

161–163; R. Root-Bernstein, 2003; R. Root-Bernstein

& Root-Bernstein, 2004, pp. 127–151). MacArthur

Fellows are no exception to the rule. In the interests of

simplicity, however, we utilized the disciplinary cate-

gorization of Fellows employed by the MacArthur

Foundation. The Foundation organizes its appoint-

ments in five groups: arts, humanities, public issues,

social sciences, and sciences. As expected, the arts in-

clude choreography, music, visual and performing arts,

and creative writing. The humanities include the schol-

arly study of history, musicology, and philosophy of

science as well as the writing of biography or transla

tion. The social sciences cover disciplinary work as far

afield as economics and linguistics, archeology, and

psychology. The sciences cover some 20 fields from

biology, chemistry, and physics to agriculture, medi

cine, and computer science. The public issues category

includes diverse work in the areas of community af

fairs, education, human rights, international security

and arms control, journalism, labor, public health, and

public policy.

Over the years spanning 1981 to 2000, the MacAr

thur Foundation appointed one fourth of its Fellows in

the arts, a bit more than one fourth in the sciences, one

fifth each in the humanities and public issues profes

sions, and one tenth in the social sciences. (See Table

3.) When we looked at the professional breakdown of

our sample—Fellows appointed in the years spanning

1981 to 2000—we found that it mirrored the group as a

whole fairly closely. Twenty-six percent of the sample

worked in the arts, 12% in the humanities, 18% in pub

lic issues professions, 15% in the social sciences, and

29% in the sciences (Table 3). These proportions re

flect an almost exact match, except that we received

one third less responses from individuals in the human

ities than we might have expected and one third more

responses in the social sciences. It is not unreasonable,

therefore, to extrapolate our results to all MacArthur

Fellows.

More to the point, the data validated our expectation

that individuals inventing imaginary worlds in child-

hood participate as adults in a wide variety of disci-

plines. When we looked with both stringent and re-

laxed criteria at sampled Fellows with assessed

worldplay, the distribution crossed all professional cat-

egories. In the second assortment, the distribution

ranged from 19% for sampled Fellows in the public is

sues professions and the sciences to 46% of Fellows in

the social sciences. (See Table 4.)

The disciplinary distribution of childhood

worldplay among MacArthur Fellows proved signifi

cantly different from the same distribution in the con

Creativity Research Journal 411

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

Table 3. Breakdown of MacArthur Fellows by Professional Fields: Sample Compared to Pool

Arts Humanities Public Issues

Social

Sciences Sciences

n % n % n % n % n % Total

Sample

23 26 12 13 16 18 13 14 26 29 90

Pool 1981–2000 154 26 98 17 107 18 57 10 171 29 587

Sample drawn from MacArthur Fellows Directory, 2000–2001, compiled by the Jefferson Institute, which included 507 out of 587 appointed

Fellows (attrition due to death or disinterest).

trol population. The intended professions of MSU stu

dents were fit within the categories established by the

MacArthur Foundation. This meant adding careers in

landscape design or theater management to the arts; ca

reers as translators or ministers to the humanities; and

careers in various technologies, medicine, and nursing

to the sciences. Students who indicated criminology,

social work, or business as career choices were placed

in the social sciences because these professions repre-

sented practical application of scholarly fields in this

category. Students who planned to become lawyers,

teachers, journalists, and politicians were placed for

similar reasons in the public issues category.

Unlike the MacArthur Fellows, the students sam-

pled at MSU did not fall as evenly across professions.

Because so many intended careers in law, business, and

education, the public issues and social sciences catego

ries together represented more than one half of all stu

dents. The arts and sciences claimed almost evenly an

other one third of students. Six percent of students had

not yet made a career choice. When we determined the

incidence of worldplay in each category, we found that

students in the humanities, arts, and public issues pro

fessions were more likely than students in social sci-

ences or sciences to have invented imaginary worlds by

a factor of two or more. (Stringent and relaxed assort-

ments differed little from one another. See Table 5.)

We observed two gross differences between our two

populations: Worldplay is more common among Mac-

Arthur Fellows than among MSU students, and it ap-

pears among Fellows working in the social sciences

and the sciences much more frequently than would be

predicted from the student responses. These differ-

ences, as presented in Figure 1 for the first, stringent

assortment of sample respondents and Figure 2 for the

second, relaxed assortment, proved significant using

412 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

Table 4. Breakdown of Assessed Worldplay Among MacArthur Fellows by Professional Field

Arts Humanities Public Issues

Social

Sciences Sciences Total

Sample No. 23 12 16 13 26 90

Positive self-reports 11 6 6 8 8 39

% worldplay by professional field 48% 50% 37.5% 61.5% 31% 43%

Assort. 1: Assessed worldplay 4 4 1 4 5 18

A 1: Not worldplay 5 0 3 2 2 12

A 1: Ambiguous 2 2 2 2 1 9

A 1: % worldplay by professional field 17% 33% 6% 31% 19% 20%

Assort. 2

: Assessed worldplay 5 4 3 6 5 23

A 2

: Not worldplay 6 2 3 2 3 16

A 2

: % worldplay by professional field 22% 33% 19% 46% 19% 26%

Ambiguous responses distributed into “assessed worldplay” and “not worldplay” categories.

Table 5. Breakdown of Assessed Worldplay Among Michigan State University Students by Intended Professional Field

Arts Humanities Public Issues

Social

Sciences

Sciences Undecided Total

Sample No. 40 9 86 62 50 15 262

Positive self-reports 19 6 33 24 19 4 105

% worldplay by intended profession 47.5% 67% 38% 39% 38% 27% 40%

Assort 1: Assessed worldplay 6 2 12 5 3 1 29

A 1: Not worldplay 12 2 17 18 16 3 68

A 1: Ambiguous 1 2 4 1 0 0 8

% worldplay by intended profession 15% 22% 14% 8% 6% 7% 11%

Assort 2

: Assessed worldplay 6 3 14 5 3 1 32

A 2

: Not worldplay 13 3 19 19 16 3 73

% worldplay by intended profession 15% 33% 16% 8% 6% 7% 12%

Includes those intending careers in law, education, and journalism.

Includes those intending careers in business.

Ambiguous responses distrib

uted into “assessed worldplay” and “not worldplay” categories.

chi-squared analysis, a measure of the discrepancy of

observed results from expected figures. (See Table 6

for statistical values for all figures.) Once again, the

first and second assortments yielded similar profiles

for the compared groups. The greater rate of worldplay

among MacArthur Fellow scientists (p < .001) and so

cial scientists (p < .0001) than among students entering

those fields is highly significant. This is less certain

when it comes to MacArthur Fellows in the humanities

(p < .01 in the first assortment) or MacArthur Fellows

in the arts (p < .05 in the second assortment). MacAr

thur Fellows in public issues professions displayed no

higher rates of worldplay than did students intending to

enter these fields.

We addressed our third hypothesis, that individuals

with childhood worldplay would find that kind of play

relevant to adult endeavor, by considering the number

and tenor of query responses to questions regarding its

importance. These responses we accepted at face

value, as indicative of respondent perceptions of con

Creativity Research Journal 413

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

Figure 1. Childhood worldplay (1st assortment): MacArthur Fellows and Michigan State University (MSU) students. See Table 6 for statistical

values. HUM = humanities; PUB = public issues; SOC = social sciences; SCI = sciences; TOT = total.

Figure 2. Childhood worldplay (2nd assortment): MacArthur Fellows and Michigan State University (MSU) students. See Table 6 for statistical

values. HUM = humanities; PUB = public issues; SOC = social sciences; SCI = sciences; TOT = total.

nections between childhood play and adult work. First

and foremost, we found many sampled Fellows report-

ing worldplay in adulthood—specifically, the inven-

tion of (or participation in) imaginary or possible

worlds in their vocations or avocations. In the context

of the query, it was suggested that the imaginary

worlds of adulthood might refer to the make-believe

realms of paintings, plays, films, and novels, whereas

possible worlds might refer to the hypothetical con

structs of scientists and others. Fifty-seven percent of

Fellows who responded to the survey answered that

they, in fact, did create or participate in such worlds in

adult vocation or avocation; over two thirds of these 51

individuals (39% of entire group) specified that this

worldplay involved the invention of imagined or possi

ble worlds in their vocational work. (See Figure 3.) For

purposes of comparison, MSU students were also

asked if they expected to invent or participate in imag

ined worlds in adult vocation or avocation. Fifty per

cent of all students expected to involve themselves in

some way in worldplay as adults; about one half of this

group, or 27% of all students, specified that they ex

pected to do so in their work. It is interesting to note

that recreational worldplay unrelated to work was also

specified by students (8%) and MacArthur Fellows

(1%), but far less frequently than vocational worldplay

(Figure 3).

When it came to adult worldplay at work, reports

surfaced in every discipline. (See Figure 4 and Table

6.) At the low end amongst MacArthur Fellows, 30%

of artists specified adult worldplay in their work; fol

lowed by 31% of individuals in the public issues pro

fessions, 38% of scientists, 46% of social scientists,

and 58% of those in the humanities. The professional

distribution of expected worldplay amongst MSU stu

dents provides a telling contrast. Students majoring in

science were the least likely to expect worldplay to

have vocational importance (6%), followed by those

undecided about their careers (7%), those in the hu

manities (11%), the social sciences (21%), the public

issues professions (40%), and the arts (50%). The

greater rate of reported worldplay at work amongst

MacArthur Fellows compared to expected worldplay

at work among MSU students is highly significant

with regard to the sciences and the humanities (p <

.0001) and the social sciences (p < .001). The greater

rate for students in the arts (p < .001) was also signif

icant.

414 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

Table 6. Statistical Values for Figures 1, 2, and 4

Expected %

(Students)

Observed %

(Fellows) ␹

Chart 1: Childhood worldplay, first assortment

Arts 15 17 1.92 .17

Humanities 22 33 7.03 < .01

Public issues 14 6 5.27 .02

Social sciences 8 31 71.81 < .0001

Sciences 6 19 29.88 < .001

Totals 11 20 6.62 < .01

Chart 2: Childhood worldplay, second assortment

Arts 15 22 3.80 .05

Humanities 33 33 -0.02 > .99

Public issues 16 19 0.63 > .90

Social sciences 8 46 196.2 < .0001

Sciences 6 19 29.88 < .001

Totals 12 26 18.51 < .001

Chart 4: Worldplay in adult work

Arts 50 30 26.64 < .001

Humanities 11 58 225.64 < .0001

Public issues 40 31 3.36 .08

Social sciences 21 46 37.67 < .001

Sciences 6 38 181.56 < .0001

Totals 27 39 6.27 < .01

Percent expected to have worldplay based on the data from the Michigan State University student survey.

df = 2.

Among those who invented imaginary worlds as

children, many Fellows (61%) and students (72%)

saw connections between that childhood play and

their adult vocational worldplay. (See Table 7.) Far

fewer said there was no connection, did not know, or

did not answer the question. As one of the Fellows

appointed in the arts remarked, “everything links.”

Like worldplay itself, however, perceptions of con

nection varied across professional fields. (See Table

6.) MacArthur Fellow artists who invented worlds as

children were most apt to see direct connections be

tween that play and adult endeavor (100%), followed

by their peers in the humanities (75%), the social sci

ences (66%), and the sciences (40%). Fellows in the

public issues professions saw no connection between

early and mature worldplay. Among worldplaying

Creativity Research Journal 415

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

Figure 3. Worldplay (WP) in adult vocation or avocation: MacArthur Fellows and Michigan State University (MSU) students. V = vertical; S =

slant; H = horizontal.

Figure 4. Worldplay in adult work: MacArthur Fellows and Michigan State University (MSU) students. See Table 6 for statistical values. HUM

= humanities; PUB = public issues; SOC = social sciences; SCI = sciences; TOT = total.

students, those in the humanities were most likely to

see connections to anticipated adult worldplay at

work; followed by those in the public issues profes

sions, the arts, and the social sciences. In all four of

these professions, connections were anticipated over

three fifths of the time. In the sciences, connections

between juvenile and adult worldplay at work were

barely expected one tenth of the time.

Respondent Comments

In many cases, students and MacArthur Fellows ex-

plained on the survey form what they meant by voca-

tional worldplay, thereby opening a window on how

they understood the playful invention of imagined or

possible worlds to be akin to adult work. One student

wrote, by way of explication, “I want to write short sto-

ries”; another wanted to “mak[e] movies”; a third ex

pected to invent worlds “with every song I write”; and a

fourth was already in the habit of creating “a story to go

along with my piano pieces so I can emotionally in

volve myself in the music.” These students recognized

worldplay in their self-expressive processes. Others

saw worldplay as a strategy for success in the work

place. “I think make-believe or hypothetical worlds or

situations will be very important in teaching,” wrote

one. “My future career [in public relations] will require

that I am able to look at multiple possible situations,”

wrote another. “If I want to win cases,” wrote a future

lawyer, “I have to create the world for the jury. In every

case I will be creating a ‘possible’ world and allowing

the jury to decide its strength.” A student intending to

be a bioethicist wrote, “Biotechnology will bring what

can only be imagined today.” This last student consid

ered adult worldplay to be much more serious than

childhood worldplay (he did, by self-report and by as

sessment, invent worlds as a child). Echoing widely

held distinctions between work and play, he did not,

therefore, see a direct connection between the two ac

tivities: “I think a lot more critically in my adult worlds

where as a child it was just fun.” Nevertheless, the in

vention of possible worlds in adult work was more than

just vague metaphor for him and for many other stu

dents as well. It was part and parcel of the imaginative

projection of alternative scenarios that they expected to

guide successful professional activity.

Many MacArthur Fellows also explained or quali-

fied their responses to vocational worldplay, revealing

an understanding of adult worldplay very similar to

that of the students. For one Fellow in the arts, “work

involves creating a world with characters and a unique,

specific logic … .” For another in the social sciences,

work required constant conjecture of “possible alterna-

tive worlds by reference to existing power arrange-

ments, interest-formation patterns, etc., and that gener

ates ‘mid-range’ theorizing.” Scientists also referred to

the world-inventing aspects of theorizing, often quali

fying their imaginative invention, in the words of one

individual, as “something abstract that can then lead to

concrete hypotheses testable by experiments,” rather

than some imaginary place “not relevant to physical

nature did.” Nevertheless, for another Fellow, theoreti

cal models did involve a suspension of disbelief most

often identified with fiction:

In a real sense to do theory is to explore imagi

nary worlds because all models are simplified

versions of reality, the world. Part of the art of it

all is what gets put in and what gets left out.

However, it is “bounded imagination” in that

one’s experience, tool kit, etc. says … pay atten

tion to these features. Because lots gets left out

416 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

Table 7. Connections Between Childhood and Adult Worldplay: MacArthur Fellows and Michigan State University Students

Arts Humanities

Public

Issues

Social

Sciences Sciences Undecided Total

MacArthur’s: Assessed worldplay (second assortment) 5 4 3 6 5 23

Perceived connection child/adult worldplay 5 3 0 4 2 14

% 100% 75% 0% 67% 40% 61%

Students: Assessed worldplay (second assortment) 6 3 14 5 3 11 32

Perceived connection child/adult worldplay 4 3 12 3 0 1 23

% 67% 100% 86% 60% 0% 9% 72%

of any model, part of the art has been described

as the suspension of disbelief … I will, for a

while, believe in this simple world, even though I

know lots of ways it fails to capture nature.

Other scientists pointed to related imaginative aspects

of their work, such as reconstructing processes with the

mind’s eye, modeling interactions and empathizing

within a system, and “making up a good story that fits

the facts.”

In addition, a few Fellows spontaneously revealed

active adult fantasy lives with self-reported elements of

worldplay. These included the Fellow who thought of

the tendency to practice “my skills by debating adver

saries or giving speeches when I’m alone (in the car or

walking to the metro)” as “imagined versions of

real-life settings in which I find myself.” They also in

cluded the Fellow who confessed, “my [spouse] and I

play an elaborate imaginary world game all the time.”

And in a totally unexpected finding, another 5 MacAr

thur Fellows revealed some tendency to “still return oc-

casionally” as adults to researcher-assessed childhood

worlds. Twelve MSU students assessed for juvenile

worldplay also responded variously that they “still

[play] in this [childhood] world today”; “still slip into

parts occasionally”; “still go there today,” “but only in

my head”; or spend time in the childhood paracosm

“sometimes,” “very rarely now,” or in dreams.

It is worth noting, finally, that worldplay was not the

only childhood play deemed important to adult voca-

tion or avocation. Over one third (38%) of MacArthur

Fellows also sang the praises of other forms of imagi

native play, as well as physical and manipulative play.

One Fellow appointed in the humanities wrote:

My childhood was fairly rough and tumble, al

ways racing around the neighborhood, building

things, starting “businesses,” coming up with

new “inventions” (that never worked), launching

ourselves into outer space, saving bugs in jars,

digging holes to China—in memory, at least, all

fresh, unfettered, and teeming with possibility.

My work today is pretty much the same thing.

Others focused on prescient role playing, on hobby in

terests such as astronomy or history, or the early

learned joys of taking things apart and putting them to

gether, which they still do in their professions today.

Students at MSU pointed variously to the importance

of reading, games of make-believe, and even sports as

preparation for adult work. Wrote one:

I chose to study English because as a child I

loved to read. I loved using my imagination to vi

sualize the worlds in books. I chose law because

perhaps I can also visualize the world I would

want to be in and help make it a reality. This task

relies on the same skills of imagination and visu

alization formed through reading and games of

make believe as a child.

Discussion

As a result of this study, we can begin to address no

tions about the rate, professional appeal, and perceived

connections between childhood worldplay and adult

work with somewhat more certainty than before.

Our first hypothesis concerned the frequency of

worldplay. Silvey and MacKeith (1988) and Cohen and

MacKeith (1991) argued that worldplay was uncom-

mon enough to be considered rare. However, Taylor

(1999), whose work on imaginary friends has contrib-

uted to the discovery that it is much more prevalent

than previously realized, proposed that the more re-

searchers look for the invention of imaginary worlds,

the more they will find of that imaginary play as well

(p. 139). Our results confirm her expectation. We esti-

mate the incidence of worldplay in a general popula-

tion at 3% to 12%. On the one hand, the invention of

imaginary worlds is certainly less frequent than play

with imaginary friends, which in several recent studies

has been found in anywhere from one third, to two

thirds, to three fourths of young children, as criteria for

defining that play are relaxed (Bower, 2005, p. 200;

Harris, 2000, p. 32; D. G. Singer & Singer, 1990, pp.

97–100; J. L. Singer, 1975, p. 135). On the other hand,

worldplay is far more frequent than synesthesia, an of

ten unvoiced condition of commingled, cross-modal

sensation estimated to occur anywhere from 1 person

in 2,000 to 1 in 200, again depending on definitions of

the phenomenon (Cytowic, 2002, pp. 8, 8l; Domino,

1989, p. 18; Hornik, 2001, p. 56).

By these measures, worldplay is a palpable pres

ence in the landscape of imagination and play. If it is

also silent, like synesthesia, this would appear to be

due not to rarity but to its private and personal nature.

At a minimum, the invention of imaginary worlds in a

Creativity Research Journal 417

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

general population represents a childhood leisure ac

tivity roughly as common as adult participation in the

United States in hobbies such as attending dance per

formances (3.6%), flying kites (3.2%), or making

models (1.7%) at least once a year (U.S. Census Bu

reau, 2004–2005). At a maximum, worldplay in the

general population approaches the frequency of pho

tography (11.4%) as an adult hobby. Moreover,

worldplay appears to be more common among a select,

creative population such as MacArthur Fellows

(5%–25%). At minimum frequency, this rate for cre

ative individuals corresponds to adult yearly participa

tion in hobbies such as chess (4.6%), drawing (6.7%),

or playing a musical instrument (7.6%); and at its max

imum to adult attendance at art museums (27%; U.S.

Census Bureau, 2004–2005).

Our second hypothesis concerned the professional

distribution of individuals who invented imaginary

worlds in childhood. Silvey and MacKeith (1988) and

Cohen and MacKeith (1991) argued that the appeal of

worldplay lies in its artistic dimensions and thus pre-

sumably grooms a child for creative work in the arts

rather than in other fields. This expectation was not

met in our analysis of either our general or our select

populations. Students and Fellows in every profession

participated in worldplay. (See Figures 1 and 2 and Ta-

bles 4 and 5.)

By and large, both general and select populations

were characterized by higher proportions of childhood

paracosmists in the humanities, followed by the arts

and sciences. (The 2 populations differently ranked the

social sciences and the public issues professions; fur

ther discussed later.) In addition, a greater percentage

of Fellows than students were likely to have worldplay

in their background in every professional cate

gory—with the exception of the public issues profes

sions in the first assortment and the humanities in the

second. Indeed, the comparison of professional rates

for students and Fellows revealed that for four of these

disciplinary categories, the social sciences and the sci

ences, and to somewhat lesser extent the humanities

and the arts, these greater numbers were significant.

(Figures 1 and 2.) In the end, it seems that scientists

and social scientists selected for their creativity are

more likely to have childhood worldplay in their back

ground than a general population of students planning

to go into these fields.

We attach a caveat to this apparent tie between

childhood worldplay and adult creativity in specific

fields or in general. Due to generational differences

between our two populations, the relative rates of

worldplay may also reflect historical changes in

childhood pastimes. Although worldplay has a docu

mented reach at least as far back as the 18th century

(Malkin, 1806/1997), certain 20th-century entertain

ment technologies, such as television and, more re

cently, personal computers and the Internet, may have

profoundly altered the landscape of imaginative play

(D. G. Singer & Singer, 2005). In particular, students

born in the 1980s may have been affected in two

ways: first, by distractions away from self-invented

(created) worldplay that television viewing may pro

vide; second, by attraction toward commercialized

(consumed) worldplay that computer simulation

games and online virtual reality games may provide.

Fellows may have invented more imaginary worlds as

children because overall they had less entertainment

options and more free time for imaginative play,

whereas students may have invented less worlds be

cause they had more entertainment options and less

free time—or simply because they had readily avail-

able commercial forms of imaginary worldplay. Even

if the observed differences between our two popula-

tions are largely generational, however, they must

give pause, for the benefits of self-invented imagina-

tive play, as reaped in adult endeavor, appear to be

considerable.

Our third hypothesis concerned the importance of

worldplay to adult endeavor and awareness of connec-

tions between mature worldplay and the childhood in

vention of imaginary worlds. Thirty-nine percent of

Fellows and 27% of students responded positively to

the question of adult worldplay in their work (Figure

3). Juxtaposing these perceptions to self-reports of

childhood worldplay (Fellows, 43%; students, 40%)

indicates that more adults reported worldplay in an as

sortment of childhood make-believe than framed ma

ture work in the same way. Juxtaposing respondent

perceptions of adult worldplay to assessed rates of

childhood worldplay (Fellows, 26%; students, 12%)

indicates that it was unnecessary to explore bona fide

worldplay as a child to consider aspects of that play

valuable to adult work.

The distribution of vocational worldplay across dis

ciplines, as presented in Figure 4, reveals suggestive

differences between our two populations in these per

ceptions of value. MacArthur Fellows in the humani

ties or social sciences were more likely to report voca

418 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

tional worldplay than individuals in the sciences, with

individuals in the public issues professions and the arts

less likely to so do. Among students, those planning

careers in the arts and public issues professions were

more likely to anticipate adult worldplay in their work

than those planning careers in the social sciences, and

these were more likely to do so than those planning ca

reers in the humanities or sciences.

These differing professional profiles suggest inter

esting biases toward imaginative strategies in the

workplace. The student profile for anticipated adult

worldplay is very nearly the opposite of actual adult

worldplay generated by sampled Fellows. A closer

look at the public issues professions, wherein students

were more apt than their MacArthur counterparts to

anticipate vocational worldplay, offers an explanation.

Students in this disciplinary category fell into three

major career tracks: law, journalism, and education.

Whereas 14% of students heading toward law antici

pated vocational worldplay and 33% of students head

ing toward journalism and careers in writing did so, a

much larger 50% of those heading for careers as teach-

ers expected to create or participate in imaginary

worlds with the children in their classrooms. (The stu-

dent focus in this category was on early elementary ed-

ucation. Teachers of art and music were categorized in

the arts; high school teachers were categorized by dis-

cipline, e.g., science teachers in science, etc.)

Such strong recognition of the role of worldplay or,

at the very least, of imaginative play in education may

reflect the growing influence in educational practice of

Paley, Singer and Singer, and others who advocate fan

tasy play in preschool and kindergarten classrooms

(Paley, 2004; D. G. Singer & Singer, 2005; D. G.

Singer, Singer, Plaskon, & Schweder, 2003; J. L.

Singer & Lythcott, 2002). Professional coaching may

dispose education students to acknowledge more

readily the invention of imaginary worlds in their

work, especially so because the context of childhood

play remains in place.

It seems likely that similar professional prepping

may also be at work in student anticipation of voca

tional worldplay in the arts. Fifty percent of students in

this category expected to invent imaginary worlds in

their work in arts and applied arts careers (Figure 4). At

this rate, they were significantly more likely to antici

pate vocational worldplay than MacArthur Fellows in

the arts were to claim ongoing worldplay at work.

Nonetheless, the smaller group of Fellows in the arts

with assessed worldplay in childhood did provide cor

roborating evidence for this professional bias. All

(100%) saw connections between their early and ma

ture inventions of imagined worlds (Table 7). These

data strongly suggest that ties between childhood

worldplay and adult endeavor are readily recognized in

the arts, where “imaginary worlds” are similarly cre

ated in fiction, music, dance, and the visual arts.

To judge by student response to anticipated voca

tional worldplay (Figure 4), there is less institutional

expectation in the humanities and social sciences that

the reconstruction of bygone days or the projection of

future scenarios, both of which must adhere to known

facts, resemble “imagined worlds” of childhood. This

is despite the fact that individual MacArthur Fel

lows—those with assessed worldplay in childhood and

professed worldplay in adulthood—reported such con

nections between two thirds and three fourths of the

time (Table 7).

Students were even less apt to expect the theoriz

ing of “possible worlds” in the sciences to resemble

the childhood invention of imaginary worlds. Stu-

dents entering the sciences, as well as those heading

for careers in medicine, farming, or computer tech-

nology, were least likely to anticipate vocational

worldplay (6%), despite the fact that over one third

(38%) of MacArthur scientists reported such inven-

tion in their work (Figure 4) and MacArthur scientists

with childhood and vocational worldplay connected

both two-fifths of the time (Table 7). It may be that

mature worldplay is less relevant to practical careers

in the sciences than to research-oriented careers (al

though this was not the case for applied careers in the

arts). It seems more likely that students of science in

general are not adequately introduced to the imagina

tive or playful aspects of their discipline and may

therefore underestimate the creativity necessary to

succeed in it. Indeed, there is little overt acceptance

in institutionalized science of imaginative elements in

discovery and research (R. Root-Bernstein, 1989a,

1989b; R. Root-Bernstein et al., 1995; R. Root-

Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2004).

In addition to the many Fellowsand students who re

ported or anticipated vocational worldplay in the work

place, a handful of Fellows and students spontaneously

revealed continued play as adults in imaginary worlds

beganinchildhood.Referenceto suchcontinued play as

adults was diffident, reflecting reticence to reveal what

manyinWesterncultureconsiderafrivoloususeofadult

Creativity Research Journal 419

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

time. As one Fellow commented with regard to his early

fantasyplay,“Ifeelawfullybashfulaboutit.Iamembar

rassed by the childishness of it.” The same embarrass

ment could attend private worldplay in maturity. “As

youget older,” wrote onestudent, “they[parents/others]

are less likely to think highly of it.” Social pressures of

this sort are no doubt at work in the observed decline of

juvenile worldplay by the late teens or early 20s. Silvey

and MacKeith (1988) and Cohen and MacKeith (1991)

found very few young adults clinging to old paracosms

orinventingnewonesofapersonalnature.Inthislight,it

is all the more remarkable that some MacArthur Fel

lows, well into middle and late adulthood, should con

tinue to engage in childhood worlds. Indeed, given the

private and “embarrassing” nature of such play, many

moreFellows(andstudents) maycontinue such pastime

thanis currentlyknown.J.L. Singer(1975) notedstrong

linksbetween daydreamsand originalityof thought (pp.

67, 163). MacArthur Fellows and others who extend

their childhood worldplay into adulthood maysimilarly

nurture imaginative and creative capacities.

As a corollary to our hypotheses, we proposed that

if individuals were to find long-term advantage in

childhood worldplay, that advantage would most likely

be found in the early training it provided in creative

process—rather than, or in addition to, early introduc-

tion to the crafts of writing, drawing, or other readily

recognized continuities of form. How worldplay ac-

complishes that creative preparation is the subject of a

phenomenological study currently underway. In fol-

low-up interviews, some MacArthur Fellows sug

gested an array of process connections that coalesce

around the capacity to concentrate deeply and persis

tently on a self-generated system. The experiences of

Galway Kinnell, Laura Otis, and R. Stephen Berry il

lustrate some of these points.

As a child, the poet Galway Kinnell (personal com

munication, July 3, 2003) built a little village in the

basement with older siblings and populated it with lead

soldiers. He remembers the salient feature of that play

as a kind of absorption:

I don’t know how far [my sisters] fell, but I fell all the way

into that world. That was the first time in my life that I really

experienced transcendence of consciousness … that time had

been separate from ordinary time. And then later in my life,

when I started writing, I noticed something that I connected

with that trance. When I was really involved with a poem I

entered the world of the poem.

The connection between the invention of imaginary

worlds in childhood and adulthood for Kinnell is “the

capacity to concentrate … that ability I sometimes

have to totally disappear into whatever I’m writing

about.” Importantly enough, that ability to disappear

also involved the ability to empathize—“to go out of

yourself and into other beings and write about them al

most as if from within.” Both capacities were first exer

cised in that long ago game of “Little Men.”

Similarly, the scientist-turned-literary scholar,

Laura Otis (personal communication, March 6, 2003),

likens her research to childhood worldplay because

both have involved the discovery, synthesis, and orga

nization of knowledge. When she was young, Otis

drew pictures and wrote stories about a girl named

Jenny who lived in an imagined world “purer” and

“cleaner” than the real one. “The real interest of it was

in planning things, picturing what their houses would

look like, how they would get food, how they would

make food.” Otis, who earned degrees in neuroscience

as well as comparative literature, received her MacAr-

thur for creative scholarship concerning interactions

between the world of science and the world of litera-

ture. She refers to her historical research as akin to her

childhood worldplay, “because to write a book—it

takes about five years for me to produce a book and you

have to keep going back to the same world; you have to

go back to the chess game and remember where all the

pieces were.” Moreover, she finds herself negotiating a

give-and-take between the discovered reality that co-

mes “from outside of you” and the “system that you are

organizing.” For Otis, there is a discipline to establish

ing order that binds worldplay in childhood to adult re

search.

In a somewhat different vein, the physical chemist,

R. Stephen Berry (personal communication, March 18,

2004), allows that worldplay may have served him as

early practice in experimental modeling. As a teen dur

ing World War II, Berry created an analogue world at

war with some friends:

A few of us really loved maps and the sense that you could

have these portrayals of what was going on in the world in the

form of a map was somehow fascinating … . We would imag

ine say two or three or four countries in an imaginary conti

nent that were typically at war or would sometimes be at war

and without having definite characters we could have one

country invade another and take over a big piece of it and

you’d erase part of the map.

420 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

The link between this play and his science is indirect

for Berry, yet compelling:

I would be curious about the extent to which imagining a pos

sible world, but still consistent with the real world, awakened

an awareness in doing science later on [that] you could be in

ventive by doing just that kind of thing. I think that a lot of

original ideas in science come from some kind of mind play

that stays within the bounds of reality, but still asks about

something that you have never seen or known to happen.

Berry’s comments linking the theoretical models of

scientists to the invention of imagined, or possible

worlds, recalls the remarks of the Fellow, cited earlier,

on “bounded imagination.” Within the limits described

by a scattering of data, the scientist imagines a fully de

scribed reality—a task analogous to that of the histo

rian or even the poet, who, too, must stay true to reali

ties of human experience.

Conclusions

In a study such as this, the data have inevitably been

affected by the biases inherent in self-selection and

self-report (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, pp. 16–19). Un-

doubtedly, the Fellows—and students, too—who re-

sponded to our queries had more time, interest, and for-

bearance for a study of play and creativity than those

who did not. Their self-reports assuredly concealed all

manner of conscious and unconscious deception about

childhood make-believe, mature imagination, and con

nections between the two. Nevertheless, self-reports

may be accepted at face value as phenomenological

data suggestive, singly, of individual experience and,

in sum, of shared human behaviors. With this caution

ary note in mind, we come to the following conclu

sions.

Worldplay is more common in both general and se

lect populations than existing literature suggests; in

deed, it appears to be more prevalent among creative

adults than among average students, although some of

the difference between these two populations may be

generational. Worldplay also figures in the childhood

of individuals at work or anticipating work in a wide

range of disciplines. Particularly in the social sciences

and sciences, creative (older) individuals were signifi

cantly more likely to have engaged in childhood

worldplay than students anticipating careers in these

fields. In addition, over one half of the study’s select

and general populations recognized an important role

for worldplay in their adult vocations and avocations.

Many perceived mature worldplay in their work; others

in their recreation. Still others continued to engage in

worlds first invented in childhood. Finally, the preva

lent perception of connection between childhood play

and adult endeavor argues that the invention of imagi

nary worlds is not some obscure form of make-believe,

but rather a phenomenon of wider cognitive import.

In fact, childhood worldplay does appear to provide

an early apprenticeship in absorption and persistence,

discovery, synthesis, and modeling. Indeed, we sug

gest that early immersion in worldplay may achieve

five outcomes of relevance to mature creativity. First,

worldplay may exercise imaginative capacities includ

ing imaging, empathizing, and modeling that we have

explored elsewhere as tools for thinking (R.

Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999). Second,

worldplay may exercise the capacity for continued

imaginative play, especially in older children and

teens, well after the intense exploration of make-be-

lieve in early childhood typically fades. Third,

worldplay may exercise the capacity for problem solv-

ing within a self-consistent, alternate, modeled sys-

tem—regardless of that system’s fantastical or realistic

make-believe context. Fourth, because worldplay ties

the daring, rule-breaking/rule-making effervescence of

play to the exigencies of convergent problem solving,

it may nurture both the ability and the audacity to

imagine potentially new and effective solutions to pe

rennial human challenges. Fifth, worldplay may pro

vide early training in the invention of culture by bridg

ing the gap Igor Stravinsky (1942/1970) once posed

between a virtual imagination and a creative one (pp.

60–70). The virtual imagination is one in which the

conceived idea remains personal, inarticulate, and

functionally ephemeral (although often embedded in

memory). The creative imagination instantiates the vir

tual and makes it communicable to local or global soci

ety in some durable and formal way through mediums

of culture as diverse as visual art, music, dance, experi

ment, hypothesis, and technological invention.

Implicit in this framework of outcomes is the sense

that imagination and make-believe exercise general,

not specialized, skills that are relevant to pursuits

across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sci

ences. This understanding distinguishes our evaluation

Creativity Research Journal 421

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

of worldplay from that of previous researchers in the

field, who have conceived of imagination as the capac

ity for fantasy and fantasy as the capacity for fictional

narrative and associated arts. Such conflation is unnec

essarily restrictive and misleading. As some of the sci

entists queried in this study have pointed out, it is nec

essary to imagine what needs to be discovered before

discovery can be made. Indeed, recent studies have

stressed that imaginative play inherently exercises the

human capacity to consider and explore alternatives to

perceived reality, to simulate (Harris, 2000). That this

capacity is as necessary to the sciences, the social sci

ences, and the humanities as it is to the arts begs more

recognition by researchers in creativity studies. Here

we specifically argue that the playful, imaginative, and

problem-solving aspects of worldplay in childhood

and adolescence may make it an indicator of early cre

ative passion (M. Root-Bernstein, in press), a “learning

laboratory” in creative process (McGreevy, 1995), and

a potential predictor for mature creative endeavor in a

wide range of fields.

Finally, we argue that worldplay at any age and in

many guises presents a microcosm with which to ex-

plore the complex nature of creativity itself. Mature

worldplay at work, in particular, may add a nuanced

perspective to the ongoing discussion of creative indi-

viduals as generalists or as specialists. Creativity is

such that an individual must combine previously dispa-

rate elements of knowledge and action into something

novel and effective. The need to be novel, to unite hith-

erto disparate elements, presupposes unusual breadth

of experience often across very different disciplines

(M. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2003; R.

Root-Bernstein et al., 1995; R. Root-Bernstein &

Root-Bernstein, 2004; Sternberg, 2003, pp. 114, 126).

The need to be effective requires focus and persistence

(Ghiselin, 1954, pp. 15–20; Plucker & Beghetto, 2004,

pp. 160–161; Sternberg, 2005, p. 304). By channeling

the individual’s capacity for make-believe into the in

vention of an imagined cosmos, involving the

particularization of its many aspects, worldplay may

very well stimulate the generalist and the specialist

together.

Questions remain. How do generational shifts in

childhood entertainment affect the landscape of imagi

native play? Why (and how) do some people retain the

childlikeability to play well intomaturity? Do theyben

efit from recognizing elements of imaginative play in

the processes and products of their work? Does their

ability to engage make-believe in the workplace (or in

leisure hours) enhance learning and knowledge mak

ing? A society that wishes to valueand promote creative

culture needs answers to the role of make-believe—and

imaginary world invention—in play and at work.

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Appendix A

Dear MacArthur Fellow:

We write to you as a fellow MacArthur Prize recipi

ent and as students of human creativity to ask if you

would take a moment to answer the enclosed query

concerning childhood worldplay.

Worldplay involves the repeated, self-consistent

elaboration of an imagined place inhabited by imag

ined people or beings. These worlds, or paracosms as

they are sometimes called, may be as impossibly fan

tastic as a land of talking toys or as plausibly realistic

as a human colony on Mars. Almost always they are

creative, in the sense of making or bringing something

new into existence. Worldplay finds its focus in the

composing of alphabets and languages, the writing of

stories and histories, the drawing of pictures and maps,

the building of models or the generating of statis

tics—all meant, in one way or another, to document the

inner imagination.

Creativity Research Journal 423

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

Very little is known about worldplay, the children

who indulge in it, or the connections that may exist be

tween such juvenile invention and adult creativity. To

thatendwehopetosurveyindividualsatworkinthearts,

sciences and humanities, identify those who imagined

worlds as children, and interview those willing to ex

plore how their early inventive play may (or may not)

have prepared the way for mature creative activity.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We

look forward to receiving your reply.

WORLDPLAY QUERY

I. ADULT CREATIVE ACTIVITY

1. Name:

2. How do your describe your vocation(s)?

3. Do you have any avocations or hobbies? Please

list, indicating how much time you give to them.

4. Has childhood play of any kind been important

to your vocation(s) or your avocation(s)? Please ex-

plain.

II. CHILDHOOD Worldplay

Worldplay involves the repeated and self-consistent

elaboration of an imagined place inhabited by imag-

ined people or beings. This world may be fantastic or

realistic. Very often, languages are invented for these

people, as well as a culture of behaviors, technologies

and institutions.

5. Did you invent such an imagined world as a

child? Please explain. IF THE ANSWER TO THIS

QUESTION IS NO, SKIP TO PART III. QUESTION

11.

6. What age were you when you first invented this

world? How many months or years did you play with

this world?

7. Did anyone play this imagined world with you?

Who?

8. Did you tell your parents or guardians about this

imagined world? What was the response?

Worldplay often finds its focus in the composing of al

phabets and languages, the writing of stories and histo

ries, the drawing of pictures and maps, the building of

models or the generating of statistics—all meant to

document the inner imagination.

9. Did you document your imagined world in some

way? Please explain.

10. Do you still have any of this documentation?

III. CONNECTIONS BETWEEN

CHILDHOOD PLAY AND ADULT

CREATIVITY.

The philosopher Kendall Walton argues that games of

make-believe alter as we mature, but in no way disap

pear. “In order to understand paintings, plays, film and

novels,” he writes, “we must look first at dolls, hobby

horses, toy trucks, and teddy bears.”

11. How important to you are the imagined worlds

(fantastic or realistic) elaborated in film, literature, art,

dance, music, etc?

Francois Jacob, biochemist and Nobel prizewinner,

said that science, too, “is a game … of continually in-

venting a possible world, or a piece of a possible world,

and then comparing it with the real world.”

12. How important to you are the possible worlds

explored by humanists or scientists?

13. Do you create imagined or possible worlds in

your adult vocation(s) or avocation(s)?

(IF YOU DID NOT INVENT IMAGINARY

WORLDS AS A CHILD, PLEASE SKIP TO

QUESTION 15.)

14. Do you see a connection between your child

hood worldplay and your invention of, or participation

in, imagined or possible worlds as an adult?

IV. PERSONAL FEEDBACK

15. Please indicate:

____ The Root-Bernsteins may attribute my re

marks in this query to me in their research and writing.

424 Creativity Research Journal

M. Root-Bernstein and R. Root-Bernstein

____ I wish my remarks in this query to remain

confidential, i.e. without name attribution.

16. Are you willing to be interviewed about your

childhood or adult worldplay? If so, please fill out pre

ferred contact information below.

ADDRESS:

PHONE:

EMAIL:

17. Any comments or suggestions you’d like to

make about this query?

Appendix B. RUBRICS:

ASSESSING IMAGINARY WORLDPLAY

䊐 notion of specific place, either partly or wholly

imaginary

䊊 “toylands”

䊊 particular, local places (such as orphan-

age, stable)

䊊 islands/countries/peoples

䊊 systems, bureaucracies, languages

䊊 idyllic daydream worlds (utopias)

WHICH MAY INCLUDE

䊐 notion of specific persons, either partly or

wholly imaginary

AND MUST INCLUDE

䊐 consistent repetition over some period of time

of specific scenario, e.g.

䊊 specific place (e.g. a name) and

䊊 specific persons (e.g. names, personali

ties) or

䊊 a continuous narrative or

䊊 evidence of systematization

CORROBORATING FACTORS

䊐 evidence that the play mattered or matters

䊊 specificity of recall or

䊊 documentation (making of props) or

䊊 statement of value

䊐 private

ASSESSING GENERAL MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY

WORLDS

䊐 notion of general place, either partly or wholly

imaginary

䊐 notion of general persons, either partly or

wholly imaginary

䊐 evidence of ephemeral nature

䊊 indication that worlds changed accord

ing to whim

䊊 lack of documentation

䊊 lack of specificity of recall

䊊 lack of continuous narrative or system

atization

䊐 enacting stories in books, radio, tv, film, video

games

䊊 explicit statement required

䊐 public

ASSESSING IMAGINARY COMPANIONS

䊐 notion of persons, either partly or wholly imag-

inary

䊊 explicit statement of imaginary friends

and

䊊 absence of imaginary place, etc

ASSESSING DAYDREAMS

䊐 ego involvement, as center of attention etc.

䊐 changing scenarios

䊐 explicit statement

Creativity Research Journal 425

Imaginary Worldplay and Creativity

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Article

Aug 2022

Fantasy proneness has recently been related to creative thinking. To try and explain this link, we examined whether the relation was mediated by Openness to Experience (openness) because fantasy proneness and openness involve an imaginative thinking style. Study 1 assessed fantasy proneness (Creative Experiences Questionnaire), openness, and creative (divergent) thinking in 87 undergraduates (77% women, mean age 21 years). Study 2 replicated the method with museum visitors of similar age (58% women, mean age 23 years). Our hypotheses received partial support: although fantasy proneness did not directly predict creativity in either study, bivariate correlations in both studies revealed that fantasy proneness positively predicted openness, and openness positively predicted creativity. In addition, openness mediated the relation between fantasy proneness and creativity, but only in Study 2. These findings reveal potentially useful relations between fantasy proneness, openness, and creativity, and show that findings from student populations are not necessarily generalizable.

Engaged in play: Seven-year-olds' engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures and their engagement with the fictional world of a video game

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2022
COGNITIVE DEV

Children's engagement in fictional worlds created when playing with toys and video games has received little research attention. We explored whether children's engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures was associated with their engagement with the virtual world in a video game in a community sample of 251 seven-year-olds (M = 6.95 years, SD = 0.38, 44 % girls). Using observational coding, we found that children's engagement with the play frame by enacting roles 'within' the fictional world was positively associated with engaging with the virtual world in the video game. We also found that child characteristics, particularly children's sex and their propensity to talk during play, were associated with their engagement in the two forms of play, and explained the associations in engagement between play contexts. These findings are discussed in terms of the features of the two contexts of play and how they promote children's engagement with the fictional worlds.

Acknowledging Creative Thinking Skills: Educating for a Creative Future

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2024

Elaine Holt

The Psychology of Creative Performance and Expertise

Book

Full-text available

Aug 2024

Kathryn Friedlander

This much-needed book introduces readers to the related fields of expertise, creativity, and performance, exploring our understanding of the factors contributing to greatness in creative domains. Bringing together research from the fields of creativity and expertise, it provides fresh insights for newcomers and seasoned scholars alike with its approachable guide to the multidimensional complexities of expertise development. It transcends traditionally studied fields such as chess, sports, and music, instead exploring the intersection of expertise with creativity and the performing arts. Dedicated applied chapters cover eight fields, including mind-games, music, dance, creative writing, acting, art, and STEM. The book also examines the facilitators of creative performance, including aesthetic sensitivity, creativity, and mental imagery as well as the obstacles to performance such as burnout, procrastination, and gender-related challenges. The book concludes by engaging with pressing issues facing expertise, including the impact of AI. Student-friendly pedagogy is featured throughout, including 'Spotlight on...', 'Check it out...', and 'Consider this...' boxes to position material within context and engage students' learning. Whether revealing how an actor brings their part to life, how writers conjure up their storylines and vibrant characters, or what lies behind scientific invention, The Psychology of Creative Performance and Expertise offers a fascinating insight into the multifaceted journey towards achieving creative excellence. This is a valuable resource for final-year undergraduates, postgraduate students, and scholars across a range of disciplines, including expertise or skill acquisition, the psychology of performance, and creativity.

Children’s Creativity, Curiosity, Imagination and Environmental Factors Affecting Creativity: Teachers’ Perspectives

Chapter

Sep 2022

The study examined the perception of preschool teachers about children's creativity, curiosity, imagination and barriers to creativity. Concurrent mixed methods design was employed to guide this research. Guided by the design, quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaire and interview. Participants of the study were randomly and purposively selected for the quantitative and qualitative data collection, respectively, from government and private preschools. Data were analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics such as frequency percentage, and mean. Thematic analysis was employed for the qualitative data. Results revealed that preschool teachers perceived those preschool children are curios, creative and imaginative. However, preschool teachers' notion about creativity was noted to have myths. As regards barriers of creativity, preschool teachers agreed that there were several hindering factors for creativity. Implications of the study are also discussed. 124

Pretend Play: A Microcosm of Creativity

Chapter

Nov 2021

Sandra W. Russ

This handbook focuses on the development and nurturance of creativity across the lifespan, from early childhood to adolescence, adulthood, and later life. It answers the question: how can we help individuals turn their creative potential into achievement? Each chapter examines various contexts in which creativity exists, including school, workplace, community spaces, and family life. It covers various modalities for fostering creativity such as play, storytelling, explicit training procedures, shifting of attitudes about creative capacity, and many others. The authors review research findings across disciplines, encompassing the work of psychologists, educators, neuroscientists, and creators themselves, to describe the best practices for fostering creativity at each stage of development.

A Review of T. M. LUHRMANN, HOW GOD BECOMES REAL: KINDLING THE PRESENCE OF INVISIBLE OTHERS. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020, XV+235 pp.

Article

Dec 2022

Marie Masagutova

Tanya Luhrmann’s new book is a great example of an academic text turning into a bestseller. The book, based on many years of fieldwork, addresses the issue of faith. The author argues that faith is not given and predefined, and instead should be seen as a long and complicated process of “real-making”—the individual’s effort to build up social relationships with the invisible Others. Throughout the chapters, the author consequently develops her argumentation, advancing from the thesis about the difference between the reality of material objects and spiritual beings to the proposition that interaction with supernatural actors changes people and their lives. The author reflects on the importance of a detailed narrative of the imaginary or invisible world (whether spiritual or fictional) in order to experience it as real, demonstrates the role of innate and kindled qualities for the perception of the religious experience, and explores the specificity of the prayer state and the signs which people perceive as a response from a supernatural actor. The review discusses the specificity of the author’s approach to the analysis and the research question itself, highlighting some possible subjects as a material which could productively complement Luhrmann’s analysis.