“Fun, Fun, Fun”: Types of Fun, Attitudes to Fun, and their Relation to Personality and Biographical Factors

This study explores the psychologically neglected concept of fun, a concept that contributes strongly to many peopleʹs perceptions of quality in life, and looks both at the different types of behaviour that people regard as fun and the attitudes that people have towards fun. Through focus groups and interviews, a 40-item attitude questionnaire was developed and completed by 1100 people. Factor analysis identified five attitudinal factors, which were labelled as "Fun involving risk-taking"; "Fun dependent on fun peopleʹʹʹ; "Fun causing happiness"; "Money needed to have fun"; and "Spontaneity as fun". These different factors showed different patterns of correlation with demographic and personality measures. The different types of situation that people described as fun were assessed by asking participants to use an adjective check-list to describe a situation they had found to be fun. Factor analysis identified five types offun ("Sociability", "Contentment", "Achievement", "Sensual"" and "Ecstatic""), the different types correlating systematically with participantsʹ demography, personality and attitudes to fun. Although often used as if it were a single concept, "fun"" is actually a complex phenomenon that has different meanings for different types ofpeople.