Abstract
Imaginative pretend play is often thought of as the domain of young children, yet adults regularly engage in elaborated, fantastical, social-mediated pretend play. We describe imaginative play in adults via the term “pretensive shared reality;” Shared Pretensive Reality describes the ability of a group of individuals to employ a range of higher-order cognitive functions to explicitly and implicitly share representations of a bounded fictional reality in predictable and coherent ways, such that this constructed reality may be explored and invented/embellished with shared intentionality in an ad hoc manner. Pretensive Shared Reality facilitates multiple individual and social outcomes, including generating personal and group-level enjoyment or mirth, the creation or maintenance of social groups, or the safe exploration of individual self-concepts (such as alternative expression of a players sexual or gender identity). Importantly, Pretensive Shared Reality (both within the specific context of table-top role-playing games, and other instances) are primarily co-operative and co-creative. We draw on multiple examples, and focus on Table-Top Role Playing games (TTRPG) – and specifically, the most popular and enduring table-top role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) – as a primary example of such play. Our conception of “pretensive shared reality” links the widespread existence and forms of adult imaginative play to childhood pretense, places it within a developmental and evolutionary context, and argues that pretensive shared realities – which underpin many forms of imaginative culture – are an important topic of study unto themselves, and may be utilized to provide methodological insight into a variety of psychological domains.
Highlights
It is received wisdom that adults do not engage in imaginative play, largely because the benchmark for this concept is childhood pretend play1
We will use the example of Table-Top Role Playing (TTRP) and Table-Top Role Playing Games (TTRPG) as a kind of case study, where we focus primarily on the two dimensions of operation of pretensive shared reality: physical embodiment and cognitive engagement
We choose to focus on table-top role-playing as it is an highly illustrative example of adult imaginative play, and is a useful way to understand adult imaginative culture as the socio-cognitive extension of childhood pretend play
Summary
It is received wisdom that adults do not engage in imaginative play, largely because the benchmark for this concept is childhood pretend play. We use this term to refer to the manner in which pretensive shared reality facilitates particular outcomes, and the functions that can be attributed to it; social utility encapsulates cooperative behavior (that is rarely if ever intentionally interpersonally competitive), which may generate personal and group-level enjoyment or mirth, the creation or maintenance of social groups, and/or the safe exploration of individual self-concepts (such as alternative expression of a players sexual or gender identity) This is true whether a father is pretending to be a tiger while chasing his young child, or whether four 35-year-olds operate invented player-characters to free the Beautiful Dragon from the Evil Queen. Table-top role-playing games generally require fairly minimal embodiment, limited to speech acts and rolling dice It is quite common for players – when operating their player-character – to produce vocal affectations or accents, and even behavioral mannerisms or styles of dress that are representative of, and consistent with, their pretensive shared reality. While many scholars within the field of cognitive science of religion are likely to accept these claims, drawing a direct line between childhood pretense, adult pretensive shared reality, and religion, may still be fruitful
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