The Nature of Fun, Part 3

What exactly is "fun" and how does it differ from other concepts related to quality and experience? Robert and Joe explore the question in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part three of our series about the
idea of fun and now. In previous parts of the series,

(00:23):
which if you haven't listened to them yet, you should
go check those out first. Um, we talked about trying
to define the somewhat elusive concept of fun and discover
how exactly it is different in form from related ideas
like pleasure, entertainment, enjoyment. We talked about some research on
the role of fun in child development and how that

(00:44):
might fit into a constructivist model of how how a
child builds knowledge about cause and effect relationships in the world.
We talked about fun and imagination, play and children, and
we're back to explore a few other avenues of fun today.
That's right, the fun train continues, and I thought an
interesting place to to start this episode off might be

(01:04):
to go back and uh touch on something that we
we hadn't really discussed in detail, and that is that
for the majority of human history, no one had any fun,
and a very large percentage of the global population isn't
having fun today because fun is just an English word
and one that we've only been kicking around according to
Donald Hedrick since the late seventeenth century. Okay, so presumably

(01:26):
people were having something uh like fun before the word fun,
and people in cultures without the English word fund or
having equivalent experiences, but they might call it something different,
and maybe calling it something different causes different sort of
associative groupings with other words and other concepts. Right, this
is one of This is the thing, right, This is

(01:46):
when you have a word like fun, what connotations does
it have within a given language, within a given culture,
and does that to what extent does that translate out
into other cultures? So uh, and ultimately that's going to
be kind of an open question here. But to get
down a little bit too, um to how we use
fun and what fun means and where the word comes from. Um.

(02:09):
I was reading an interesting paper from nineteen seventy two
titled Degree Words. Uh, well, it's the book actually not
not an article by American linguist Dwight to Bollinger just
who describes fun as a noun that had been fully
adjectivized by quote. The younger set again, he's writing, I
think the book came out on seventy two, and these

(02:30):
may have been writings that were, uh, there were a
little bit earlier, so you can roughly think, you know,
middle twentieth century on this. That's interesting. So he's saying
definitely that fund as a noun goes back farther than
fun as an adjective. Right, and so for some quick
examples of this um the use of a noun fun,

(02:50):
you might say, if you were to use the Simpsons quote,
this is the largest car I could afford. Should I
therefore be made the subject of fun? I guess? Or
here's the here's here's a simpler use of the noun.
Are we having fun yet? If you ask that question
the answer is no and then adjective use uh. It

(03:12):
could be an example. Here's another Simpsons quote. I don't
remember this episode specifically, but can't you just bat that
all the horses have a fun time? I don't recall
what episode that's from. I don't know. It's just looking
for I had to find another Simpsons quote with the
word fun. Okay, but the fun there is an adjective.
It is describing the quality of the time they had, right,
or another example of adjective use would be something that

(03:34):
we discussed in the first episode, the movie was fun. Okay, Yeah,
So you can imagine two slightly different sentences that mostly
mean the same thing, but with subtle differences. You could
say I had fun at the movie. That's uh, that's
a now, and you're saying fun is some kind of substance,
and you experience that substance or you part partook of
that substance while watching the movie. The movie was fun

(03:57):
is an adjective describing something about out the experience, right,
And so Bolinger points out that in this fun becomes
an enhancer as well as I guess you know, we're
talking about what does it mean when you say a
movie when someone asking if the movie was good and
you say it was fun. In that case, it it's
sort of like a limitter as well. You can say
like it was it was up to a certain point,

(04:18):
to a certain threshold. Interestingly, though, it's the oldest usages
of fun seemed to be the use of fun as
a verb. So an example of this would be this,
this is something when they encounter in certain books, uh
and works. So I kind of associate this kind of
phrase with like sort of hay seed fiction. Uh, you

(04:39):
might see someone say, well, we we were just funning you,
We was just funning you. I'm just fooling yeah. And
while then there's gonna be a close connection there. Uh.
And while this verb form isn't really used today for
the most part, or certainly not the most popular use,
the most widely used version of fun, we still see

(05:00):
examples of this preserved and phrases like to make fun
off right. So there it's the noun. But I think
that means the same thing as funding you or making
fun of you. Yes, well, actually no, I wonder I
mean funny you seems to maybe broader. That could mean
making fun of but it could also mean sort of
just playing with you. Yeah. I guess it's a context

(05:20):
dependent right. I was reading about all of this in
a book titled The Painted Word, A treasure Chest of
Remarkable Words in their Origins by Phil cousinu and it
tracks the original verb fun back to the sixteen eighties,
and he writes that the exact origin of the word
is uncertain. However, it might be a variant of the

(05:42):
Middle European word fun in which means bifool. He also
points out that eighteenth century lexicographer Samuel Johnson considered fun
a quote low cant word and uh. And he also
points out the out the here points out that funny
money also pins some of the original usage of the

(06:02):
of the verb funny fooling to be fool. Okay, so
maybe if you trace it back to its origins, it's
it's possible that it doesn't just mean having a good time.
It means something more with the connotations of trickery or
or guile or something. Yeah, that's what that seems to
be the case. Now that's this This gets into a

(06:24):
whole complicated area though, right, like, do the origins of words,
you know, unknown origins especially, do they still resonate to
any degree within a given cultural linguistic system. But the
way when you look at it, it does seem like
the origins of fun may indeed lie in foolishness and uh,
in in this in this kind of mischief that is

(06:46):
at the expense of something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
one can't help. But but wonder, you know, we're just
we're talking, for instance, about movies. If a movie is fun,
that means it can't be great. And is that wonder
if that has any connection with this idea that fun
itself is something that has done, uh that is enjoyed
that or or encountered at the expense of something more important. Well,

(07:10):
it makes me think about how a lot of movies
that you would say, well, it wasn't good, but it
was fun means something about how I don't know if
the movie was successful in the way that it meant
to be, but I was able to make fun out
of the experience of it, which kind of like the
way that maybe even if your king isn't doesn't have
such a good humor himself, you know, the court jester

(07:32):
can can make a good time for everybody, and the
king can't really do anything about it without really looking bad. Yeah,
this is another great, um, great point. Something we should
have talked about, I guess when we're talking about about
the movie connotation earlier, because yeah, when you say that
a movie wasn't great but it was fun, you could
mean that in a very heartfelt way, like like, yeah,
this wasn't a great movie, but it was enjoyable. I

(07:53):
had a great time watching it. I was able, I
I enjoyed the you know, some of the imaginative ideas
in it, or you could mean it like no, that
movie it wasn't It wasn't good. In fact, it was horrible.
But I enjoyed watching it because I I I, I
feel great pleasure looking upon works of ruin. It entertains

(08:13):
me to watch others fail, and I am deeply down
a horrible person. So anyway, most of us just more
food for thought, I think now, as far as I
can tell, and I was looking around for this. I
no one seems to have done an exhaustive look at
fun or fun like words in other languages, but I thought,
might it might be telling to at least look at

(08:34):
one related word in a not too distant tongue. So
I thought we might look at the German word spas.
All right. I was reading about this on your Daily
German dot com by a writer and he also does
see him on some YouTube videos by the name of Emmanuel,
and it's quite fascinating. So spas essentially means fun or sport.

(08:58):
But as the author points out, you can't just throw
the word in via rough translation. And this, of course
is going to be an obvious reality for anyone out
there who's recently taken any kind of foreign language or
you remember any foreign language classes you took in the past.
You can't just swap out words and expect a translation
to still work most of the time. And maybe it's

(09:19):
possible with more closely related languages, but for instance, German
to English, you're gonna mess things up if you try
and translate things like that. So, for instance, with spas here,
you can't say that was fun and then translate that
roughly to dosivar spash like. It just wouldn't work. And
we'll get back to why in a second. So spas

(09:39):
is apparently the Germanized version of the Italian spaso, which
means fun or entertainment and comes from the Latin verb
uh x expossary, which is a version of the word expondary.
Uh So, according to the author here quote so, that
means spash is related to expand and the author here

(10:02):
explains that the connection here would seem to to indicate
there's an idea of letting go, perhaps like to have
fun is to let go, to have fun is to expand. Um. So,
I don't know. I don't know if that connection is
purely lost within the confines of the German language or not,
but it's kind of interesting you know. It comes back
to that question, like if if you're like two or

(10:23):
three changes away removed from the origin of a word,
does the origin still resonate in the current usage? Oh? I,
I feel like I see plenty of parallel to that
kind of expression. Even in English. When you have fun?
Are you cutting loose? When you have fun? Are you
letting your hair down? How about that? Yeah? Now to

(10:43):
come back to just how the word is used um
the author here uh Emmanuel. He points out that sposh
and fun are both used differently. So in English we
say something is fun, or we can say something is fun,
but in German something makes fun or it makes one fun.
And the example they point to is uh the sentence

(11:04):
uh Deutsche learning mokomir spash so clunquily you could you
could translate if you were bad at translating, you could
clunquily translate that to German learning makes me fun. But
of course a much better and truer translation would be
I enjoy learning German or to me, learning German is
fun interesting, So there would be a trait ascribed to

(11:25):
the speaker kind of it would be kind of like
saying learning German makes me happy. Except it's not exactly
the same thing as happiness, right right, So, uh, there's
a whole article on this that your Daily German dot com.
Definitely check that if you're interested in in the German
language or this particular example. Likewise, I know we have
a bunch of multi lingual folks out there, and I

(11:48):
would love to hear some other examples of like how
what is the word that is like fun in another
tongue but also distinct from fun? I'm I'm interested also
in words that that fun can be translated as, but
that also encompass things that we don't associate with fun
so much. So, Yeah, any great examples of that out there,

(12:10):
Feel free to write in about them. We'd love to
hear from you, absolutely. That's one of my favorite kinds
of listener mail, actually, is when we hear from somebody
who speaks a different language telling us about the idea
we talked about in their language. Yeah, I remember, we
got a lot of those with our episodes about days
of the week. Yeah. Alright, Well, there are a couple
of papers I wanted to look at examining a couple

(12:34):
of other aspects of fun. One began as a tangent
off of the other, but eventually became so interesting that
I wanted to devote its own section to it. So
the first one I wanted to look at, the original
one is a paper published in ten and the Journal
of Positive Psychology by Harry T. Rice, Stephanie D O'Keefe,
and Richard de Lane called fun is more fun when

(12:57):
others are involved. This is about the social aspects of fun.
Uh Now, I wanted to mention a few things from
their background section. One. First of all is that they uh,
they cite and echoed the sentiments of the two thousand
ten paper we looked at in part one, the Fun
Fun Fun paper by by McManus and Furnum, And they're

(13:17):
citing the idea that fun is really of central importance
to our lives. And yet given this importance, it has
been given remarkably little formal study in psychology, though related
concepts like play in intrinsic motivation and happiness have received
more attention. They point out that quote the word fund
does not appear as an index term in any emotion

(13:40):
or social psychology textbook or handbook of which we are aware,
which is kind of hard to believe, but so they say.
Then they actually They cite McManus in Furnham's paper mainly
for the idea that fun is, as the previous authors concluded,
a quote complex phenomenon that has different meanings for different
types of people. And so this is the idea of

(14:01):
the conclusion we talked about in part one, that there
is actually that is there's actually very little that is
quote fun for the whole family. And when an activity
is fun for everyone, it's often because it is a
multifaceted activity and different people can appreciate different aspects of it.
So imagine a family board game. Some family members might

(14:23):
find this fun because they like games they inherently enjoy
well what McManus and Furnum called like the achievement factor
of fun. These are like focused activities where you are
maybe getting into a flow state, or you are trying
to focus all your attention on doing them correctly, and
that sort of thing, where others in the family might
still enjoy the activity, but for totally different reasons, maybe

(14:44):
because they enjoy relaxing in the company of family and
the game doesn't really matter to them, Or others might
enjoy the game because they like talking and joking while
the game's going on. That's what they called the socializing
factor of fun. Now for more background, The authors here
also look at UH some studies that exist not so
much about the nature of fun itself, but about the
consequences of having of having fun in various environments. So,

(15:08):
for example, there are a lot of studies that seem
focused on the idea of having fun at work, and
they cite a big list of papers showing that quote
experiencing fun at work, either in job related activities or
socializing with co workers positively predicts higher job satisfaction and
lower employee burnout and turnover. However, I think many of

(15:30):
us know the flip side of that about how in
some cases it can be rather excruciating when the boss
or a coworker wants to insist that you have fun.
And there are actually studies on that too. They cite
a couple of them. I picked one to highlight and
read and full, and I gotta say, I found it
really interesting. So I actually want to make that whole
paper aside quest that I'll come back to after I'm

(15:50):
done talking about this one. So Rice and co authors
in Seen were focused on the social aspects of fun. UH.
They were trying to see if there are major differences
between the experience of solitary fun, you know, when you're
having fun because of the activity you're doing, versus social fun,
in which fun is potentially because of the activity, but

(16:11):
also because of the social context. And so to highlight
some of their main findings, remember again, these are going
to be averages because many people do have very different
ideas about what fun is. Even though there are trends,
on average, people have more fun doing things with others
than they do doing things alone. But there are important

(16:31):
exceptions to this trend. People tend to have more fun
sharing and experience with a friend. In some of these experiments,
they literally ask people to bring a friend as opposed
to sharing the same experience with a stranger. And I
thought this was an interesting contrast with the study about
childhood development that we talked about in the last episode,
where children on average seem to have more fun with

(16:54):
a novel toy as opposed to a familiar toy, or
seem to have more fun with a toy about which
some functional mystery remains, like if you still haven't figured
out how it works or all the things you can
do with it, some amount of novelty or uh. Still,
ambiguity about the mechanics of a toy makes it more fun.

(17:15):
So when it comes to inanimate objects for play, familiarity
more often leads to reduced fun. And yet in this case,
the authors here find that the opposite is true with people.
You tend to have more fun with a friend than
a stranger. Though I guess an important consideration for that
is the difference between a friend and a stranger is
more than just the difference in familiarity versus novelty, because

(17:38):
usually a friend is somebody you have chosen on purpose
to spend time with. I wonder if you tested this
with other familiar versus novel relationships apart from friendship, like
bring a coworker or bring a relative, the results might
not be the same. That's interesting too to think about
in terms of children, because when you when you start
looking at like the world of play dates, um, you know,

(17:59):
in some basis that's a child that a friend that
has been chosen by the by one child by one
of the children in question. Other times it's just, hey,
these two adults know each other, they both have a
child at the same age, So guess what play date
is happening. The whole world of like of childhood development
and play is so rich with different possibilities, like because

(18:20):
you also get into the world of like, Okay, now
we have two children hanging out together. They may squabble
over a toy, but if you have two of the
same toy, then they may engage in something called parallel play,
where they're both they're not really playing with each other.
It's not really a social interaction, but they're both kind
of doing the same thing at the same time, which
I guess is kind of a necessary developmental step to

(18:41):
get to that point to where you're actively playing together.
But I would bet even in a lot of parallel play,
if they're not constantly playing together saying a cooperative or
competitive way, they still at various points kind of check
in with one another and see what the other is doing.
Would would you agree with that? Yeah, It's kind of
like imagine two kingdoms that have a ward in the past,

(19:04):
and now that they're they're working towards interaction and for
now we're just we're just happy that they're both doing
our own thing, but we do have to check in
with each other every now and then to make sure
that you know, everything is still cool, and you are
also interested, like, how are they playing with that toy?
Can I do that with mine as well? Exactly? Yeah.
So this study also related fund to the so called

(19:25):
core affect model, which is a two variable description of
the consciously accessible features of a person's basic neurophysiological state.
And the two values are hedonic valence and arousal. So
hedonic valence is pleasure versus displeasure, and arousal is activated
versus de activated. And you can imagine, uh, these two

(19:48):
variables forming a graph with four corners. So in the
unpleasant de activated corner, you could be depressed, lethargic, board tears,
I don't know, think you know, waiting on hold on
a call with your insurance company for hours. In the
pleasant deactivated corner, you could be peaceful, relaxed, and content,

(20:08):
maybe lying in a hammock in the shade. In the
unpleasant activated corner, you could be extremely frightened or distressed
and anxious. And in the pleasant activated corner you could
be excited, happy, or ecstatic. So I think you know,
the middle of a concert, seeing your favorite band, or
playing a really fun game. And the authors here found

(20:30):
on average that experiences that people describe as fun actually
increase both low activation and high activation pleasant states. So
people think describe things as fun, and it seems to
push them both in the hammock direction and in the
concert direction. But social fund, specifically fun with other people

(20:51):
increases high activation pleasure. However, there was a there there
was an interesting exception to all this, and it was
the variable of the trade loneliness. They found quote that
loneliness moderated the latter effects, such that lonely individuals received
a weaker boost from shared compared to solitary fund. So

(21:14):
in general, people have more fun if they're having fun
with other people, but specifically, the trait of being lonely
makes people less likely to get that additional boost from
having other people around when they're having fun. And I
thought that point was really interesting. The author's right quote.
Previous research has suggested that loneliness is less a matter

(21:36):
of spending time alone and more a matter of not
experiencing a gain in positive emotions from social activity. And uh,
I don't know if I'd ever heard it put exactly
this way before, but that absolutely rings true to me. Like,
in my experience, loneliness is not simply not being around
other people. People often describe feelings of loneliness most acutely,

(22:00):
like in really close temporal proximity to social events. Like
a feeling of loneliness might come on when you are
leaving a party and reflecting on the party or the
social event that you just attended, sort of thinking about
the idea that you were surrounded by people, but there
was like a problem. It felt like something wasn't right.
Maybe some kind of depth or richness of social interaction

(22:22):
that other people appear to be experiencing from talking to
friends at a party doesn't really seem to work for you, Like,
you don't get that same benefit. And they cite several
studies such as Hawkley at all in two thousand three
and Si and Rice from two thousand nine pointing towards
the conclusion that the core trait of people who experience
loneliness is quote a relative lack of intimacy and enjoyment

(22:45):
in interactions with friends. Now, I think trait loneliness can
can fluctuate, so, like you know, I think some people
can probably say from experience that, like you can go
through more kind of lonely periods in your life where
that that is an experience for you and then fortunately
come out of it and uh find situations where you
get more enjoyment from social interaction. But that does appear

(23:08):
to be a very important, uh limiting or mitigating factor
in the idea that bringing people along for your fun
activity makes it more fun. That is true for note,
for most people, but not for everyone. Right right, And
again I guess it also depends on the yet the activity,
the people that might come along. Uh yeah, there are

(23:29):
there are other factors to to tease a part there
than now I'm ready to jump into this uh this
side quest paper about uh the idea of having fun
at work. Remember that this was originally in the context
of being a counterpoint to a whole bunch of studies

(23:50):
that found essentially there are positive there are benefits to
employees having fun at work and saying, you know, your employee,
it would be really great if you can make work
a fun environment. That's good even for objective measures for
the bottom line of a business. And so the paper
I read here was by a an author named Peter
Fleming who was associated with the University of Cambridge at

(24:12):
the time he wrote this. I think he said an
Australian University now um but the title is workers Playtime,
Boundaries and Cynicism in a Culture of Fun Program, published
in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science in two thousand five.
And I will try to summarize this as breezily as
I can, but had so many interesting little tangents in it.

(24:34):
So Fleming starts by talking about how, beginning roughly in
the nineteen eighties and continuing through to the time this
paper was written, there was kind of a fad complex
among business academics and management consultants and company culture gurus
that was all centered around the idea that the workplace
had to be fun. And this was based on some

(24:56):
actual research like there were study is and also just
popular workplace anecdotes that seem to show tangible gains for
businesses when their employees had fun at work, with claims
that work you know, when your workers are having more fun,
they're more motivated, more productive, more committed to their jobs,
more innovative or creative, they provide better customer service, and

(25:20):
so forth, all of which might be true. In fact,
I think it probably is true. And even on top
of that, more recent studies show that when employees have
fun at work or have fun socializing with coworkers. They
tend to report higher job satisfaction, less burnout, and the
rate of employee turnover is lower. But okay, so you

(25:40):
imagine you have these facts in hand and you want
to implement that knowledge. So you're a manager or a
business owner, how do you make sure your employees are
having fun? Uh? So fleming rights quote through informal dress codes,
office parties, games, humor, zany training camp, joking, and so on.

(26:01):
Organizational members are encouraged to loosen up and find more
pleasure in their roles. So this concept, of of course,
has been explored in satire many times over the years.
I mean, obviously The Office explores this a lot. The
awkwardness of workplace fun but also the release of workplace fun.
I mean, those are two common themes on that show.

(26:23):
Um also the the excellent recent series Severance. Uh this
is this doesn't spoil anything, but the basically the basic
concept for anyone unfamiliar with it, is that you have
a neural implant that separates your uh, your your home
life from your work life, your AUDI from your any,
and your any has no memory or knowledge of your

(26:44):
AUDI and vice versa. And so there are a lot
of themes in this show regarding fun in the workplace. Uh. There's,
for instance, in this show, the the employees try to
win such privileges as the pre waffle party eggbar social
where they win it. There's like this little cart that's
brought out and it has like fancy deviled eggs on

(27:05):
it and some punch, and yeah, everybody wants this and
it does even in the show, and it's kind of quirkiness.
It seems kind of delightful, and it made me almost
nostalgic for enforced fun in the workplace. Well, of course, yeah,
and that that highly said it can be a mix, right,
Like Zaney training camps might sound kind of dreadful, but
office parties can be fun or not. Sometimes they are.

(27:28):
Humor and joking are certainly good, right right, Well, sometimes
they are. But I wanted to read a section directly
from Fleming here to give you a little more flavor
of what you know, some of this uh you know,
company culture guru inspired uh joking might be like so
um Fleming rights quote. Perhaps the best known proponent of

(27:49):
staged corporate humor is bar su. He maintained that management
can use joking, laughter, and smiling to develop vibrant and
creative organizations. In fact, it's applicability is apparently universal, and
then Flaming begins a quote from this source. Humor plays
a vital role in helping to close the communication gap
between leader and followers, helping to extract information which might

(28:12):
not otherwise be volunteered. It also enhances trust, facilitates change,
and encourages plurality of vision. Humor breaks down barriers between
people and makes an organization more participative and responsive. It
follows that an environment that is amenable to humor will
also facilitate organizational learning and renewal. And then Flaming himself

(28:34):
goes on. The underlying paradox here, as in much of
the prescript of literature, is that humor is ultimately a
serious business. It is unsurprisingly driven by very sober corporate motives.
The obvious difficulty of institutionalizing an experience that is usually
considered spontaneous was intimated by Hudson in two thousand one
and executive for Brady Corporation. She observed that humor and

(28:58):
fun can be developed through exerci eyeses that may feel spontaneous,
but are in fact well orchestrated through party events such
as brady Fest or the Lego program, in which employees
play with Lego blocks like children. That's that's a that's
a loaded statement. I mean, there are plenty of adults
out there who who who have fun with Lego blocks,

(29:20):
and there's nothing wrong with that. I love Lego, I am.
I'm so excited about the idea of playing with Lego
blocks on my own terms. If my boss told me
to play with Lego blocks, I don't know, that might
be a little different. Well, and I guess my approach
would be what it could be worse at least, and
we're not doing trust falls or anything like that, or
having to pretend to attack each other that sort of thing. Yeah,

(29:42):
so so so, So what was the actual observational component
of this paper? Well, Fleming here took part in a
field study where he observed the workings of a customer
service call center in Australia pseudonymously called sun Ray. That's
not the real name, but that's why he's calling it
for the purpose of this report. So this is a
qualitative report. And this company was selected because it was

(30:04):
known for trying to create a fun atmosphere at work,
and Fleming performed a bunch of in depth confidential interviews
to understand how the culture of managed fun worked. And
this culture of fun has too many facets to get
into all of them here, but it's everything from you've
got planned activities like there was one described as sort
of like high school musical theater where employees would be

(30:27):
like bust off somewhere to learn and then perform a
song and dance routine. Uh. To dress up days where
you would dress up like a superhero or you'd wear
pajamas to work to a handbook of company philosophy that
includes a bunch of stuff about the three FS, which
are focus, fun, and fulfillment, And to read from Fleming

(30:48):
here quote when an employee embodies the three f's, they
are said to have the right attitude. This involves a
set of performances that communicate a positive personality, a childish playfulness,
and a belief frame of mind. Importantly, however, a genuine
expression of these demeanors, rather than mere surface acting, is
mandatory at Sunray. The Fund's got to be real, okay,

(31:10):
so um Fleming found through his observations and interviews that,
in fact, though there were some people who did appreciate
this culture of managed fund One of the core results
of these top down attempts to make work fun was
a mounting sense of cynicism in a subset of employees,
which he traces to to a blurring of the boundary

(31:32):
between work life and non work life. The dissolution of
this boundary was not necessarily, in fact probably not in
most cases a good thing. Yeah, the blurring of that
boundary always seems to be right for contention, no matter
which which direction things are getting blurred in, because it
can certainly feel weird when and when employees are encouraged

(31:52):
to bring more of their outside self into work, But
it also feels weird if they're encouraged to leave it
at home, like there's there's there's not really, you know,
it's very imagine from the employer's side of things, it's
a very tricky area to navigate because it seems like
you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. Yeah,
And there's another kind of paradox or double bind like

(32:13):
that that we'll get to after the conclusion here. So uh,
deep interviews revealed to Fleming that several of the major
problems with the culture at this company of man. The
culture of managed fun here uh came from the dissolution
of of boundaries and UH. This dissolution of boundaries represented
a couple of things. One of them was condescension. Some

(32:35):
employees felt that the regime of fun was actually infantilizing,
treating them like kindergarteners rather than as adults with dignity
and self respect. And like two of the main work
non work boundaries blurred in this arena where the boundaries
between work and school and the boundaries between work and family.
So you know, if you are made to feel like

(32:56):
you are a student and your boss is the teacher,
or made to feel like maybe you are a kid
and your boss is the parent, that that's a kind
of like unpleasant and condescending boundary to blur. Uh. And
as a compliment to this, I didn't mention it earlier,
but there's a whole section about how it's sunray this workplace.
They used a lot of messaging about how they are
a family, and much has been written about that concept lately.

(33:21):
But to read from Flaming quote, in its most patronizing form,
paternalism erodes this rational sense of self and endeavors to
instigate a childlike membership role that simultaneously positions management as
benevolent caregivers. You can see why this might be unpleasant
for some people. Okay, so first this condescension. The second

(33:41):
uh boundary blurring problem is inauthenticity. Basically, by constantly insisting
that work is something else, work is something fun, that
work is like a party, or work is like family,
or work is like a game, many employees were driven
to reflect on exactly the ways that work is not
like any of these things. So to use the example

(34:03):
of family, if a family is in you know, families
can be a lot of different things, but in the
best sense, maybe a family is supposed to be about
unconditional love. Is that really what a workplace is like? No, No,
generally not unless your workplace is your family, and which
case that's there's even more work or more room for
for a complex complex understanding there. But but yeah, for

(34:27):
the most part, it is. It is. It is far
from unconditional. It is very conditional. Oftentimes you will sign
a document that that spells out what those conditions are. Yeah, yeah, uh,
so there's that. But in the case of so that's
like the family comparison, but imagine the boundary blurring with
other types of more fun oriented stuff. So suggesting that
work is like a party or work is like a game.

(34:50):
A key difference is that fun non work activities are
generally things you do freely. You know, at least under
the right can editions, you are doing them of your
own volition. And they are also generally things that you
are free to stop doing as soon as you decide
that they're not actually fun. Workplace events are not like this.

(35:12):
You know, the boss says it's time to have fun
now actually borders on an oxymoron, which I think sort
of reveals an interesting fact about fun itself that we
haven't really gotten into much yet. Fun, for some reason,
at least in my mind, entails some assumption of freedom.
The exact same activity could be fun if you choose

(35:34):
to do it freely, and it can quite easily stop
being fun if you were forced to do it the
exact same activity if somebody is saying you must do it, well,
that's not so much fun anymore. So try to make
somebody play a game, even if it's a game they
would enjoy another context, and you are almost certainly leaving
the Kingdom of fun. Yeah, yeah, I mean plenty of

(35:55):
people have explored this, even if if they themselves are
the boss and question turn the thing, turn your passion,
turn your hobby into even a side business. And sometimes
you're you're hit with the reality of this, Well, it's
not quite fun anymore because I'm not entirely doing it
completely on my own terms anymore exactly. And this also

(36:16):
sort of reminds me of the study we talked about
in part two about the relationship between fun learning and
free exploratory play in young children. So if young children
learned by playing, and the wages of play is fun,
the internal reward for experimental play behavior is the sense
of fun. Uh, You've got to think about how these

(36:38):
behaviors are usually noted to be self directed. It is
free exploratory play as soon as an adult comes in
and tells the child what they have to do. Is
that free exploratory play anymore? And does it come with
the same sense of fun? I don't know, But anyway,
this all leads up to an answer to a paradox

(36:58):
that is emerging from earlier You know what, didn't this
all start with the idea that there are a bunch
of studies, or at least observations about how fun workplaces
are better in in many objective measures, like their employees
are more committed, more motivated, and so forth. Well, yes,
but there may be a very important taxonomic difference. The

(37:18):
most authentically fun workplaces are the ones where the workers
create organic fun for themselves, rather than the cultures of
fund that are deliberately constructed by management. But there's a
twist to even this. So I'm gonna quote from Flaming here.
Flaming sites a number of studies in the sentence, but
I'm gonna skip over those. Uh, he just writes quote.

(37:41):
When playful schmoozing is self initiated in this way, however,
members of management often find it an affront to their
authority and are quietly distrustful, even though it may actually
lead to higher productivity, as Gouldner discovered in relation to
quote indulgency patterns. Indeed, as Ackroyd and Thompson in ninety

(38:02):
nine and Fleming and Sewell in two thousand two, intimated,
self authored fund may even be interpreted as seditious nous
simply because it has not been officially sanctioned. So we're
left in this conundrum where it's like, I would say,
fun actually is good both in itself because it's it
makes people happy. It's a good thing, and it's usually

(38:23):
good in its indirect effects on business. Bosses know that
fun workplaces are objectively better for the bottom line in
a lot of different ways. Yet when employees create an
authentic culture of fun for themselves, bosses are often suspicious
of it or hostile to it. And when bosses try
to inject fun into the workplace from the top down,

(38:46):
it can backfire and lead to unhappiness and cynicism. You
could say, like, well, if you've got cynicism about attempts
to have fun at work, then you've just got a
bad attitude. There's something wrong with you. But I think
Fleming takes I would say, in a pro priently sympathetic
reaction to to this idea, he he describes cynicism as

(39:06):
a kind of defense mechanism, or a psychological self vaccination
against the loss of dignity implied by the condescension of
managed fund and against the loss of integrity implied by
the inauthenticity of managed fun. And so in the end,
in the conclusion section, he offers a few final thoughts
um one is that basically, if you're trying to intentionally

(39:30):
create an environment of fun, you really need to consider
how these attempts will land with respect to people sense
of adult dignity and uh and integrity. You know, you
want to make sure that whatever you're doing does not
feel uh, does not feel condescending in fantalizing, or does
not feel kind of fake and forced. And the next

(39:51):
point that he makes this really makes me think, Rob
about your comments earlier about the relationships between fun and
the tradition of fooling uh Fleming rights quote. It has
been suggested that authentic fun may not only be incongruous
with managerial control, but gain it's very inspiration from being
against authority. And I think there's a lot of truth

(40:15):
to that's got to go right to the heart of it, right, Like,
it maybe kind of painful to the boss's ego, but
in some cases it might actually be the best thing
for a business to let the employees make their own fun,
even if some component of that fun is a kind
of rebellious or satirical attitude to company authorities. Yeah, yeah,

(40:36):
that's uh and yeah, this day goes straight into the
tradition of the fool. You know, the fool is the
one who can who can joke with the king without
being sent to the gallows, that sort of thing, you know,
And you get into traditions of carnival and stuff where
the uh you know where where the where the fool
becomes king for a day and so forth. Yeah. Yeah,

(40:56):
So if this is true in business, and I find
myself pretty well convinced by this, I think this makes
a really strong case. It makes me wonder how the
same thing might be true not only in business, but
in other goal oriented team activities. Like I wonder if,
for example, sports teams or military squads or the things

(41:17):
like that also have objectively better performance by some measures
when there is a sense of fun, but that fun
cannot really be installed from above, and to some extent
necessarily involves a spirit of camaraderie against the coach or
against the sergeant and so forth. Yeah, and I this,

(41:39):
this definitely helps contribute to the picture that a good
boss has to be the right combination of things. Um,
it's easy to think again of the office in this
comparison in which we have in the character of Michael Scott,
we have this, uh, this, this ineffective boss, the boss
that is too eager to want to be part of

(41:59):
the fun one. But also I seem to recall also
at times like he's he that also makes him more
subject to being hurt by not being part of the fund.
I guess a lot of times he's he's oblivious to
that as well. But there's probably I guess there's probably
some great examples in fiction of of the thin skinned
boss as well, the one that that really wants to

(42:21):
to stamp out any kind of workplace fun, a pure villain. Well,
I mean, I think about how many scenes in the
office involved workers genuinely making their own authentic fun, and
they are having fun, and then Michael detects this and
tried to insert himself into it. It's like I want
to be a part. Yeah. Anyway, that's the end of

(42:41):
my thoughts about that. But I found that paper unusually
fascinating for a business psychology uh paper, Yeah, fascinating and
a certainly one that resonates still today. Obviously, the workplaces
has changed a lot in the past couple of years,
but a lot of these realities still still hold true.
But I would say regarding the broader concept of fun,

(43:03):
just One of the main things again I want to
emphasize extracting from that is the relationship between um, between
fun and authenticity, the relationship between fun and freedom, and
between fun and self volition. Yeah, fun is the thing
I choose to do. Uh, and I'm making a choice
in the fun. If if fun is demanded of me,

(43:24):
well then it's it's probably not fun anymore. Though again,
fun is so subjective. You can easily imagine a situation where,
or perhaps reflect on a situation where there was some
sort of workplace induced fun that surprise actually ended up
being fun. Things like that do happen, sure and too.
I mentioned this, but just to say it again in
the UH. In this study, Fleming did find some you know,

(43:47):
some employees liked the culture of managed fund, just not everybody.
There was just a large subset that that founded insulting
or making them cynical and so forth. And again, I
would be interested to hear from from people who have
his bosses h employers out there, like it has to
be frustrating because it's like, okay, we were gonna do um.
I don't know what's an example. I guess, well, the

(44:10):
egg bar. You know, let's say you're rolling out the
deviled egg bar for your employee. Yes, some people are
insulted by this and they think it's infantile, and so
then you take it away, and then other people are
hurt that they're no longer getting an eggbar. Like there's
it seems like it's there's there's no way to please everybody.
Let's see it giving people paid time off. I'd say
that please is just about everybody. Well, yes, yes, I

(44:30):
think I think I think everyone's in favor of that,
because then it's up to you to have fun. If
you want fun, or if you can have fun. Of course,
some people are gonna have to use that time to
to do freelance work, or work another job, or take
care of other responsibilities. Of course, but then again that's
sometimes the case with with where we didn't really get
into this. But but sometimes if you have workplace induced fun,

(44:51):
well that's coming at the expense of work that you're
supposed to do and expected to have completed. Because exactly
a complicating fact. I didn't mention the in fact, this
is something that has talked about, like there's another problem
with workplace fun. This was not so much the subject
of Fleming's paper, but it was highlighted in in the
Rice paper in the summary section said, another major problem

(45:12):
with workplace fun is when people are, say, feeling like
they don't have enough time to do all the work
they need to do, if they're in a rush, if
they've got a big workload. Uh. People often perceive managerial
attempts to inject fun as really infuriating distractions from you
know what, that what they're supposed to be focusing on. Yeah,
but then again, m employees are were impossible to please

(45:35):
because I distinctly remember examples of where work would say like, Hey,
we're gonna have drinks on the house for everybody after
work today, and I would be like, well, I'm going
home after work. Why don't you do this during the day.
Do it during the workday. That's the day that I've
carved out for you. So if you're going to give
me a free drink, give it to me during that
time period. So again, impossible time during the workday to
do that. I'm going to do my work. Yeah, thank

(46:04):
thank Now. I thought we might come back to a
topic we touched on previously. I mentioned how personally when
it comes to exercise that I I would not describe
some of the experiences as fun. For example, I believe
the example I used was if I'm swimming laps by myself,
I would not say that's fun. I would say it's fulfilling,

(46:24):
it's satisfying, it's good for even a flow state, and
you know, a sort of headspace of creative thinking. But
I would not say this is fun. I am having
fun now, or I had fun doing that. But it's
not just you know, it's it's dependent under the things.
If I'm swimming with my son in a cool pool,
like it has a waterfall or something, and uh, you know,

(46:46):
we're having a good time, that's fun. That's obviously fun.
So this is all, of course very subjective, and as
is fun itself. We had a listener right in and
mentioned that they personally would only find swimming not fun
they didn't reach their goal, or they weren't able to
perform to meet their own expectations. And I agree that
that not meeting expectations for performance is less satisfying and

(47:09):
even disappointing. But I would not personally state that the
opposite of all of this is fun. But again, all
of this is highly subjective. But I did find some
research some writings on this topic, so I thought I'd
share some of this here. So UH, some of this
was related to some work by a World at All. Uh.

(47:30):
The first thing I ran across by these authors was
a two thousand fourteen article in Marketing Letters. UH, and
it was titled is It Fun or Exercise? And uh
when the subduct The sub title for the paper was
the framing of physical activity biases subsequent snacking. So the
authors here looked at research to determine how the perception

(47:52):
of fun in exercise impacted one's likelihood of later indulging
in hedonistic snack um, you know, basically rewarding yourself with
some sort of perhaps unhealthy treat later in the day.
And their findings indicated that the more fun an activity
was in the individual's mind, the less likely they were

(48:15):
to later seek that reward of a hedonistic snack. Quote.
Engaging in a physical activity seems to trigger the search
for reward when individuals perceive it as exercise, but not
when they perceive it as fun. So the idea here,
which the authors elaborate on more in a paper from
titled is It Fun or Exercise? UH, is that the

(48:38):
more fun and exercise is the less we're likely to
focus on the work involved, which you may seem like
an overstatement of the obvious. But uh, you know, if
we often have to have these things spelled out in
research and in these is the sort of findings. But
and as we point out, pretty frequently, what seems obvious
is often untrue. That's right, right, So these these statements

(48:59):
and ideas have to be examined. Yeah, So the idea
here is if you're if you're having fun, and if
you feel like you're having fun even while you're exercising,
then later you're less likely to feel like you're entitled
to that reward. And the reverse if you feel like
that exercise was a lot of work, like, well, that
wasn't fun, but I, you know, I sure did really
pump the iron today. I deserve that that doughnut. I'm

(49:21):
entitled to that donut. And so the authors say, quote,
focusing attention on something else may change the perceptions of
the effort expended during the activity, reducing feelings of entitlement
due to exercising. So this would seem an indicator that
there's certainly a benefit beyond motivation to exercise itself, in

(49:41):
finding a form of exercise that produces a feeling of fun. Yeah,
so that maybe if your exercise is fun, it's not
just that you're more likely to do it, but also
that you're less likely to try to compensate with other
rewards later. So maybe if you're you're playing a sport
you like versus I don't know, just running on a
treadmill exactly right or um, this is an example that

(50:05):
comes to my mind. Anyway, I'm not a runner, so
I can't speak to this, but I know we have
runners out there, and if I know one thing about runners,
they love to talk about running right in and let
us know. But it seems that like running around on
a on a track, you're gonna have limited stimuli. But
if you're out running in the world likest like most
runners I know like to do like you're you're you're

(50:26):
subject to, you know, a different environment, to different novel
details of that environment, and I can imagine where that
would be more likely to produce an experience of fun
whilst running. I remember I formed a very strange association
with exercise years ago, where I uh, for some reason,
the pattern I put together is that every time I

(50:46):
went to the Y m C. A too and spent
time running on a treadmill. I would watch televangelists on TV,
and that was it formed some kind of unbreakable link
in my mind. So I still sometimes associate exercise the
prosperity gospel. We're okay. The authors of this paper, they
do suggest towards the end of the paper, they say, quote,

(51:07):
listening to music during a run, making phone calls during
a walk, or watching a video during a treadmill routine
maybe more related to weight loss, success and to perseverance
than previously thought. So, yeah, that's that's interesting. I would swimming.
There are a lot of those things I can't do
while swimming. But I will say that if the the

(51:28):
y m c A where and I swim on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, there's an aerobics class in the pool, and uh,
the person who runs that class always has a boom
box out and they're always just really pumping out the jams.
I'm talking stuff like there's orbital playing. It's you know
Mortal Kombat soundtrack, uh stuff. I mean the original, the

(51:51):
Paul Anderson original Mortal Kombat soundtrack with like KMFDM and
all that. Well, I don't know, I don't know if
ever came FDM on their but you know, a lot
of a lot of pumping beats, and I will say
it makes those days more pleasant than the other days
where it's just empty pool ambience. So I will say, yeah,
I can see the difference just you know, in my

(52:13):
own experience there. And so obviously that's going to be
even more enhanced if you have some degree of control
over the music or what you're watching while you are
on the treadmill. Uh did you have a say so
in what you watched at the y m c A
was just what was on? Uh yeah, the treadmills that
each had little individual TVs and uh so you could

(52:33):
pick what was on them. I mean if the TV works.
Sometimes it didn't, but uh yeah, you had a choice.
And I don't know, I often don't love a lot
of what's on basic cable. So it seemed for some
reason like the Health and Wealth Gospel was a was
a good choice at least it was kind of interesting
in some way. Okay, I can see that. Now this

(52:53):
also makes me think that, um, I know, in a
lot of these exercise machines, you also have other forms
of visualization, and especially in the light of these uh
this paper that I just referenced, it's also interesting. I
was looking at some other studies that were considering the
use of imagery to enhance the perception of fun in exercise.
So I think the specific categories that we're looking at

(53:14):
were enjoyment, imagery, energy imagery, technique imagery, or just straight
up exercise alone without any imagery. And um, I believe
they were finding that, yes, all three of these actual
categories of imagery seem to have an effect on on
on the perception of fund in exercise. And I think

(53:34):
it's it's ultimately beyond the scope of that research, but
I wonder if the imagery was perceived was perceived more
as a reward or an enhancement, you know, like how
do you how does the how does that work on us?
If is the is the imagery on the screen in
front of you, that is, you know, connected to your
performance on the treadmill? Do we end up seeing that
as reward or is that just an enhancement of fun?

(53:57):
I don't know. Yeah, interesting, I don't know either. It
kind of comes back to what we said earlier, like fun,
despite being this thing that drives so much in our
lives and in our culture. Uh, there's not as much
written about as as you might expect. Also, the word fun,
it's just used so often you can make searching for
these these papers a little difficult as well. Yeah, yeah,

(54:18):
a lot of papers that heavily referenced the word fun
are not really about fun, all right, everybody. Uh, it
looks like the the the fun train is reaching the station.
We are gonna reach the end of this particular journey,
but it but who knows. We could We could be
back at some point in the future if some other

(54:38):
interesting topics come up regarding fun. And of course we'd
love to hear from everyone. Again, if you have thoughts
on fun, a bit to experience of fun, fun in
the workplace, the linguistics of fun, etcetera. Do right in.
We'd love to hear from you. I'm sure we'll be
talking about this on listener Mail episodes in the future.
Listener Mail episodes of course air on Mondays and the
Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Who season thurstees

(55:00):
are pore episodes. Um, hey, those are the dance music
days at the at the y m c. A. There
you go. Interesting coincidence there Wednesdays that's a short form
artifact or monster fact. On Fridays, we do Weird How Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and
just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always
to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

(55:22):
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

(55:43):
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