Fun isn't easy: Children selectively manipulate task difficulty when “playing for fun” versus “playing to win”.

Play is important in many cultures and species, but the basic motivations behind play remain unclear. In two preregistered experiments, we examined what 5- to 10-year-old children (n = 124) think makes play rewarding under internally and externally motivated contexts using a novel game design task. We specifically compared children's choices about how to best configure a novel tossing game when either playing for fun or playing to win. We found that for "win-relevant" variables, children chose easier settings when playing to win than when playing for fun. By contrast, for "win-irrelevant" variables, children generally preferred similar settings across conditions. Children also judged "win-relevant" variables as more important to winning than "win-irrelevant" variables and judged both as irrelevant to having fun. These results suggest that playing to win and playing for fun are distinct motivational contexts to which children can appropriately adapt their decisions during play. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).