Editing Fun (section)

==Psychology==
[[File:"Fun, off the job keeps him on the Job" - NARA - 514789.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[World War II]] era employment poster about the importance of fun]]
According to [[Johan Huizinga]], fun is "an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to the animal level."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Huizinga |first=Johan |authorlink=Johan Huizinga|url=https://archive.org/details/homoludensstudyo1950huiz/page/2/mode/2up |title=Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture |year=1950 |publisher=Roy Publishers|location=New York|via=the [[Internet Archive]]|page=3|oclc=1013214672|isbn=9780415175944}}</ref> Psychological studies reveal both the importance of fun and its effect on [[time perception]], which is sometimes said to be shortened when one is having fun.<ref>{{Cite journal
| last1 = Sackett | first1 = A.
| last2 = Meyvis | first2 = T.
| last3 = Nelson | first3 = L.
| last4 = Converse | first4 = B.
| last5 = Sackett | first5 = A.
| title = You're having fun when time flies: the hedonic consequences of subjective time progression
| journal = Psychological Science
| volume = 21
| issue = 1
| pages = 111–117
| year = 2010
| pmid = 20424031
| doi = 10.1177/0956797609354832
| citeseerx = 10.1.1.719.8861
| s2cid = 14988552
}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Why Time Flies When You're Having Fun|url=http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249410.php|first=Sarah|last=Glynn|work=Medical News Today|date=August 2012|access-date=2013-02-06|quote=Just being content or satisfied may not make time fly, but being excited or actively pursuing a desired object can.}}</ref> As the adage states: "[[wikt:time flies when you're having fun|Time flies when you're having fun]]".

It has been suggested that games, toys, and activities perceived as fun are often challenging in some way. When a person is challenged to think consciously, overcome challenge and learn something new, they are more likely to enjoy a new experience and view it as fun. A change from routine activities appears to be at the core of this perception, since people spend much of a typical day engaged in activities that are routine and require limited conscious thinking. Routine information is processed by the brain as a "chunked pattern": "We rarely look at the real world", according to game designer [[Raph Koster]], "we instead recognize something we have chunked, and leave it at that. [...] One might argue that the essence of much of art is in forcing us to see things as they really are rather than as we assume them to be".<ref>{{cite book |last=Koster |first=Raph |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gIGxSe2MsecC&pg=PA22 |title=Theory of Fun for Game Design |publisher=O'Reilly Media, Inc. |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-4493-1497-2 |pages=22 |author-link=Raph Koster}}</ref> Since it helps people to relax, fun is sometimes regarded as a "social lubricant", important in adding "to one's pleasure in life" and helping to "act as a buffer against stress".<ref name="Urdang">{{cite book |last=Urdang |first=Esther |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_xR7o8hvatkC&pg=PA445 |title=Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Interweaving the Inner and Outer Worlds |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7890-3417-5 |edition=2nd |pages=445}}</ref>

For children, fun is strongly related to play and they have great capacity to extract the fun from it in a spontaneous and inventive way. Play "involves the capacity to have fun – to be able to return, at least for a little while, to [[Neverland|never-never land]] and enjoy it."<ref name=Urdang />