The National Institute for Play

Welcome to Play Styles! We are so glad you're here. 

Play Styles is distinct from other personality assessments: it reveals the spark of your unique play nature and shows you how to tap into that limitless source—the part of you that is naturally curious, energized, joyful, resilient, and most fully yourself. For many of us, this part has been buried beneath years of adult responsibility, and chronic play deprivation can contribute to rigidity, mood-driven behavior, depression, lack of empathy, and poor impulse control. Grounded in neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp's discovery that play is one of seven primary emotional systems in the subcortex, this framework draws from four decades and thousands of clinical personal play histories collected by Dr. Stuart Brown and the National Institute for Play. The patterns in play histories reveal our biological design to play in unique ways.

Understanding your unique play style helps you identify natural entry points to the state of play, giving you a toolbox to access those entry points more easily and often. You can make intentional choices about how you spend your time, design environments that energize you, connect more authentically with others, and navigate challenges. This approach weaves together the anciently rooted wisdom of temperament, emotional systems, and psyche with the transformative lens of playfulness. 

Before proceeding, we must hold an important paradox: personality is dynamic, interconnected, and a mysterious blend of biology and environment—far more complex than any framework can fully capture. Play Styles is a helpful tool, but this framework will always be incomplete and oversimplified. We offer it with humility, knowing that simplification serves understanding only when we remain aware of the vast complexity beneath.

Let's dive in! 

Discover your Play Style