





































7

Games and their rhetoriCs: 
an idiosynCratiC aPPreCiation oF  

the Contributions oF brian sutton-smith

GArry ChiCk

Brian Sutton-Smith left a legacy of more than 40 books and 300 articles published, 
along with numerous conference presentations, television appearances and 
projects, and speaking engagements around the world over a 60-plus year career. 
While not all of these directly engaged play, this corpus surely makes Sutton-
Smith history’s most prolific scholar and advocate of play. The majority of his 
research on play was directed at children and psychological in nature but he was 
deeply eclectic and bridged a variety of other disciplines including anthropology, 
sociology, folklore, history, philosophy, biology, ethology, and neurology, among 
others. In addition to several of the essays in this special issue, his work has been 
reviewed and summarized by others (see Meckley 2015) and by himself (Sutton-
Smith 1995; 2008). I edited two issues of the journal Play & Culture, plus part of 
a third in 1991, as a Festschrift for Sutton-Smith while Anthony Pellegrini edited 
another in 1995. Sutton-Smith further cemented his legacy with the publication 
of his classic book The Ambiguity of Play (1997). In this book, he convincingly 
showed that how we have thought about and conducted research on play has 
been based in a series of underlying cultural and ideological values and that 
understanding them may lead to a more unified discussion of the phenomenon.

To review his career and contributions to play research alone, without even 
considering what he did for other fields such as children’s folklore, is a daunting 
task and one that I am unprepared to execute. While Brian was my friend, we 
were never collaborators. He did, however, co-author several very influential 
articles with my Ph.D. advisor, John M. Roberts, during the 1960s. Our association 
since the mid-1970s rests, in large part, on that conduit. So, as a friend, but outside 
observer, and an anthropologist with interests in expressive culture, broadly 
considered, but adult play and leisure, more particularly, my review of Brian’s 
contributions to play theory over his long career will be personal and idiosyncratic 
rather than comprehensive. In particular, I will focus on Sutton-Smith’s early 
contributions to the study of games and suggest how they may have influenced 
his thinking on play, specifically in terms of play research that he regarded as 
reflecting the rhetoric of progress, the rhetoric of fate, and the rhetoric of power.

In The Ambiguity of Play, as well as several earlier publications (Sutton-Smith 
1993a; 1993b; 1995), Sutton-Smith (1997) detailed seven of what he termed 
rhetorics, or narratives designed to persuade, about how play has been, or should 
be, conceptualized. These include the rhetoric of play as progress, the rhetoric 
of play as fate, the rhetoric of play as power, the rhetoric of play as identity, the 
rhetoric of play as the imaginary, the rhetoric of play as the self, and the rhetoric 
of play as frivolity. Briefly, the rhetoric of play as progress is based on the notion 
that play is adaptive, for both animals and children, and is a context for their 
socialization and enculturation for the latter. The rhetoric of fate, which Sutton-

CFR_2015_R.indb   7 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

8

Smith regarded as the oldest of the group, has generally been applied to games 
of chance based on the belief that the human condition is controlled by external 
forces—the gods, luck, and so on—and possibly influenced only by magical or 
religious manipulation. The rhetoric of power is most often implicated in athletics, 
sports, and physical contests and is a representation of conflict. The rhetoric of 
identity usually applied to festivals and celebrations of community. The rhetoric 
of the imaginary idealizes the imagination and celebrates the creativity that so 
often occurs in play. The rhetoric of the self generally refers to solitary and risky 
activities, such as individual hobbies or bungee jumping, but also to the intrinsic 
and aesthetic experiences of the players. Finally, the rhetoric of frivolity has a 
reflexive character, “applied to the activities of the idle or the foolish” (Sutton-
Smith 1997:11), but also acts as playful dissent against the orderly world imposed 
by society. Sutton-Smith (1997) termed each of these a rhetoric “because its 
ideological values are something that the holders like to persuade others to believe 
in and to live by” (11). He noted “By seeing how the play descriptions and play 
theories can be tied in with such broad patterns of ideological value, one has 
greater hope of coming to understand the general character of play theory, which 
is the ultimate objective here” (12). But, in the long process of arriving at this 
ultimate objective, Sutton-Smith began with the ethnographic study of children’s 
games.

The Study of Games

Games appear to be a universal component in the content of cultures, both past 
and present (Brown 1991; Murdock 1945) and their study has occupied a small, 
but relatively consistent, niche in anthropological research for more than 150 
years. Lewis Henry Morgan, for example, in League of the Iroquois (1851) claimed 
that the Iroquois had six principal games that could be described as either athletic 
or as games of chance. In the first cross-cultural comparative study of games, Sir 
Edward Burnett Tylor (1879) attempted to show that apparent similarities between 
patolli, as played by the Aztecs, and pachisi, as played in India, provided evidence 
that the civilization of India had influenced the culture in Mesoamerica. Tylor’s 
thesis was soon dismissed and the cross-cultural comparative study of games was 
dormant in anthropology for the next 80 years. 

Nevertheless, numerous ethnographic descriptions of games, both among 
children and adults, continued to be produced. These include Stuart Culin’s studies 
of games in Brooklyn, New York (1891), in Korea, China, and Japan (1895), in 
Hawaii (1899), and his canonical treatises on Native American games (1902; 1907). 
Other studies include Firth’s (1930) ethnography of a dart match in Tikopia, 
Raum’s (1953) description of hoop-and-pole games in Africa, and Cooper’s (1949) 
survey of games among Native South Americans. In the functionalist tradition, 
Stumpf and Cozens (1947; 1949) claimed that games and sports served as training 
for war among the Maori of New Zealand and the natives of Fiji. Similarly, Dunlap 
(1951) suggested that Samoan games and sports interrelated with aspects of social 
organization that included not only warfare but also education, economics, and 
religion. Sutton-Smith made important contributions to game ethnography with 

CFR_2015_R.indb   8 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

9

several studies of the games of New Zealand children in the early 1950s (Sutton-
Smith 1951; 1953a; 1953b) culminating in a book, The Games of New Zealand 
Children in 1959.

The Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of Games

Although ethnographic studies of games continued to be produced, cross-cultural 
comparative research on games languished. Then, in their classic 1959 article, 
“Games in Culture,” Roberts, Arth, and Bush launched not only the modern era 
of cross-cultural comparative research on games but also of expressive culture 
(to include play, sport, art, music, and other leisure pursuits), more generally. 
Additionally, they provided both a definition of games and a system for their 
classification that have since become standards in anthropology and have been 
used in other fields, as well. Roberts et al. (1959) defined a game as “a recreational 
activity characterized by: (1) organized play, (2) competition, (3) two or more 
sides, (4) criteria for determining the winner, and (5) agreed upon rules” (597). 
They regarded certain other recreational activities, found around the globe but 
lacking competition, such as “noncompetitive swimming, top-spinning, and string-
figure making” as “amusements” (597). 

Roberts et al. (1959) classified games in terms of what leads to winning and 
losing, that is, physical skill, strategy, or chance. Therefore,

Games of physical skill as herein defined must involve the use 
of physical skill, but may or may not involve strategy or chance; 
examples are marathon races, prize fights, hockey, and the hoop and 
pole games. In games of strategy, physical skill must be absent and a 
strategy must be used; chance may or may not be involved. Chess, go, 
poker, and the Ashanti game of wari are examples. Finally, games of 
chance are so defined that chance must be present and both physical 
skill and strategy must be absent; examples are high card wins, dice 
games, and the moccasin games. (597–98)

Roberts et al.’s (1959) final and most important claim was that games are 
expressive models of other, important real-world activities. These include things 
such as hunting, warfare, social interaction, and divination: 

It is also evident that most games are models of various cultural 
activities. Many games of physical skill simulate combat or hunting, 
as in boxing and competitive trap shooting. Games of strategy may 
simulate chase, hunt, or war activities, as in backgammon fox and 
geese, or chess. The relationship between games of chance and 
divining (ultimately a religious activity) is well known. In instances 
where a game does not simulate a current cultural activity, it will 
be found that the games ancestral to it were more clearly models. 
(1959:599)

CFR_2015_R.indb   9 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

10

Moreover, Roberts et al. (1959) regarded the types of games existing in various 
cultures to be products of, or at least related to, child socialization practices and 
to form valuable contexts for learning, particularly about things that may be 
dangerous in real life, such as hunting big game and warfare.

In his first anthropological article on games, “The Meeting of Maori and 
European Cultures and its Effects upon the Unorganized Games of Maori 
Children,” Sutton-Smith (1951a) showed that the Maori game huripapa, a form of 
knucklebones (a game that resembles jacks), predated European contact despite 
a claim that it had been introduced to the Maori by early whalers. Additionally, 
he briefly described numerous types of games then still played in Maori schools. 
Given his abiding interest in games, after arriving in the U.S. permanently in 1956 
and having published (with clinical psychologist Benjamin G. Rosenberg) “Sixty 
years of historical change in the game preferences of American children” in 1961, 
he was drawn to the work of Roberts, then a professor of anthropology at Cornell 
University. He first collaborated with Roberts on a cross-cultural comparative 
project based primarily on the idea that games are expressive models of real-
world activities (Roberts and Sutton-Smith 1962). In particular, they viewed games 
as “exercises in mastery, with games of strategy, chance, and physical skill being 
related, respectively, to the mastery of the social system, the supernatural, and the 
nexus of the self with the environment” (168).

Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962) utilized ratings for child training for 111 
societies compiled by Bacon, Barry, and Child (1955). Bacon et al. (1955) rated 
boys and girls separately for child training in “responsibility, obedience, self-
reliance, achievement, nurturance, and independence” (168). The ratings provided 
information on rewards for showing the behavior as well as the amount of anxiety 
displayed for not showing the behavior, the frequency of the various behaviors, 
and the degree of conflict over them. Of the 111 societies, data on games and 
game play were available in the Cross-Cultural Survey and Human Relations Area 
Files based at Yale University. Twenty-seven societies contained “moderately 
complete descriptions of games, and 29 societies provided descriptions which 
were usable though incomplete” (Roberts and Sutton-Smith 1962:168). Game 
play was not distinguished on the basis of age or sex since the ethnographies 
often failed to provide such information. Hence, the separate child training 
ratings for boys and girls presented a problem. Roberts and Sutton-Smith solved 
this by combining the ratings for boys and girls as Bacon et al. (1955) indicated 
that females tended to receive mostly positive ratings (i.e., rewards) while males 
received both (i.e., rewards and punishments). Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962) 
addressed only four types of games: (1) games of physical skill, (2) games of 
physical skill with strategy, (3) games of strategy, and (4) games of chance. They 
found no instances of games that involved all three outcome determinants, that 
is, games of physical skill with both strategy and chance. Games of physical skill 
with chance or strategy with chance were too infrequent to consider separately so 
they combined the former with games of physical skill and the latter with games 
of strategy.

Roberts et al. (1959) had determined that presence of games of strategy was 
associated with cultural complexity when measured by the degree of political 

CFR_2015_R.indb   10 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

11

integration and social stratification in societies. Because complex social systems 
presumably required obedience to authority, Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962) were 
not surprised to find that the presence of games of strategy was associated with 
childhood training in obedience. In particular, societies that had games of strategy 
were more likely to reward children for being obedient, to punish them for 
disobedience, to have high frequency of obedient behaviors, and to instill conflict 
over obedience. The presence of games of chance was found to be associated 
with rewards for responsibility, the frequency of responsibility, and anxiety 
over achievement. Finally, the number of games of physical skill had significant 
relationships with rewards for achievement and frequency of achievement. 
Games of physical skill with strategy also were associated with punishment 
for not achieving. In sum, Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962) concluded that the 
relationships they found “show fairly specifically that strategy is associated with 
obedience and not with responsibility or achievement, chance with responsibility 
and not with obedience, and physical skill with achievement and not with 
obedience and responsibility” (174).

Based on these results, Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962) then conducted what 
they termed a “subsystem validation” to examine differences between American 
girls and boys. Since “girls are given more consistent obedience and responsibility 
training” while boys received higher training in achievement, girls should then 
be more interested and involved in playing games of strategy and of chance 
while boys should prefer games of physical skill. They tested these conjectures 
using data on the game preferences of 1,900 third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade 
Midwestern children gathered earlier by Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg (1961). 
The cross-cultural findings indicated that, since girls received more training in 
responsibility and obedience while boys received more training in achievement, 
the former should prefer games of strategy and chance while the latter should be 
biased in favor of games of physical skill. Specifically, they found that boys and 
girls shared preferences for 18 games of strategy although girls preferred five not 
liked by boys. Girls preferred five games of chance not liked by boys while boys 
preferred one game not liked by boys. Girls liked five games of physical skill not 
liked by boys while boys liked 20 not preferred by girls. Although not all of their 
premises were supported in a statistically significant sense, all were generally 
in the directions predicted. In a later study (Sutton-Smith, Roberts, and Kozelka 
1963), they found support for the same predications among adults.

Based on their findings with regard to games, which they regarded as 
expressive cultural models, Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962) proposed a 
general theory of involvement in cultural models that they termed the “conflict-
enculturation” hypothesis (184). They indicated

The theory implies (1) that there is an over-all process of cultural 
patterning whereby society induces conflict in children through its 
child-training processes; (2) that society sees through appropriate 
arrays and varieties of ludic models to provide an assuagement of 
these conflicts by an adequate representation of their emotional and 
cognitive polarities in ludic structure; and (3) that through these 

CFR_2015_R.indb   11 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

12

models society tries to provide a form of buffered learning through 
which the child can make enculturative step-by-step progress toward 
adult behavior. (183–84)

Games, and presumably other expressive cultural models, are therefore 
microcosms of social structures wherein winning and losing are represented. 
Individuals seek these models because, in them, they can find codifications of the 
cognitive and emotional aspects of conflicts inculcated during their childhoods 
that are not available to them in real world cultural participation due to their lack 
of maturity. So, for example, in games of strategy such as chess or go, individuals 
can practice deceiving and outwitting powerful opponents while also commanding 
forces while still being commanded by others in the real world. According to 
Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962)

Between the ages of seven and twelve years the child learns, in 
simple direct form, how to take a chance, how to show skill, and how 
to deceive. Increasingly, in complex games, he learns the reversibility 
of these styles—when to rely on one type of success gambit rather 
than another, how to combine them, etc. What he learns from the 
games are the cognitive operations involved in competitive success. 
These cannot be learned by young children in full-scale cultural 
participation. The can be learned only through models, whether 
games or models of other types. (183)

In a 1963 publication, Roberts and Sutton-Smith, along with Adam Kendon, 
focused on models of strategy not only in games but also in folktales (Roberts, 
Sutton-Smith, and Kendon 1963). In this study, Sutton-Smith combined his interests 
in folktales with Roberts’ interest in games by examining folktales “that resemble 
games in that they display definite outcomes with winners and losers” (186). 
They asserted that “Folk tales and games are quite different media of expression, 
but they are similar in that they model or represent behaviors occurring in other 
settings, both real and imaginary” (185). Their general hypothesis was that strategy 
in folktales will occur in cultural settings that also include games of strategy. In 
line with their previous research, they hypothesized, specifically, that strategic 
outcomes in folktales, when they occur, should be accompanied by games of 
strategy, high obedience training, and high levels of political complexity (a proxy 
for cultural complexity, more generally). To test their hypothesis, Roberts et al. 
(1963) used a sample of folktales assembled by Child, Storn, and Veroff (1958). 
Twenty-seven of the societies in the sample had previously been scored in terms 
of the presence of game types. Twelve folktales from each society, purportedly 
representative of the types of tales found in each, were judged by three raters 
whether they had an outcome, that is, an apparent contest between two sides, 
or not. Only those folktales agreed on by at least two of the raters were chosen 
for the study. Then, the three judges (based on definitions established by the 
first judge) rated the tales in the sample in terms of the relative extent to which 
the outcome for each involved physical skill, strategy, and chance although the 

CFR_2015_R.indb   12 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

13

primary interest in the study was strategy. Roberts et al. (1963) found, in support 
of their hypothesis, that “(a) the strategic mode of competition is modeled in 
both games and folktales in a number of cultures; (b) where the strategic mode 
of completion is modeled in one medium (i.e., games) it is likely to be modeled 
in the other (i.e., folktales); and (c) the strategic mode of completion as modeled 
in games and in folktales is associated with both obedience training and cultural 
complexity” (195–96). Based on these and their earlier findings, Roberts et al. 
(1963) speculated, in terms of cultural evolution, that

the probable order of the appearance of the cultural inventories of 
child-training procedures and models is as follows: (a) nurturance 
and self reliance with no games; (b) independence, responsibility, and 
achievement with games of physical skill and games of chance; and 
(c) obedience with games of strategy. (198)

In a 1964 study, Sutton-Smith and Roberts showed that 8 to 12 year old children 
were able to attribute playing style-like characteristics to others. They created 
a categorization of players wherein those who “act (a) like players in games of 
chance and try to succeed by relying on luck, i.e., are fortunists; (b) like players 
in games of physical skill who try to succeed by applying physical power, i.e., 
are potents; or (c) like players in games of strategy who try to succeed by making 
wise decisions, i.e., are strategists” (15). Children who either lacked followers or 
gave up in the face of difficulties were regarded as failures. In addition to the 
children’s sociometric ratings of others, teachers rated the children in terms of 
their success in the classroom and on the playground. Sutton-Smith and Roberts 
(1964) found that 76% of the children named as classroom successes were in the 
top quarter of the distribution of strategists as perceived by other children. Fifty 
per cent indicated by teachers as successful on the playground were in the top 
quarter attributed as being potents. Fifty-nine strategists, but only four potents 
were regarded as classroom successes by teachers while 34 potents, but only 17 
strategists, were classified as playground successes. Teachers classified 65% of the 
children regarded by their peers as either fortunists or failures as failures either in 
the classroom or on the playground.

Sutton-Smith and Roberts (1964) extended their study by further examining 
the children who were in the top quarters of the distributions in each of the 
categories. As some children were in the top quarters of more than one category, 
Sutton-Smith and Roberts created the additional categories of potent-strategists, 
potent-fortunists, and fortunist-failures. They reported: 

Our results show that boys make distinctions among children who 
succeed by strategy, children who succeed by power, and children 
who succeed by using a combination of these two types. Boys do not, 
however, appear to distinguish clearly between children who succeed 
by good fortune and those who simply fail. To succeed by luck is 
apparently tantamount to failure.

CFR_2015_R.indb   13 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

14

Girls, on the other hand, distinguish between children who 
succeed by fortune and those who simply fail. The largest difference 
between the two groups is to be found in the girls’ game preferences 
in which the fortunist—failures are not unlike the success groups 
in their responses, whereas the pure failure group is atypical and 
immature. The distinction made by girls between potent-strategists, 
strategists, and potent seems not to be a distinction in type as it is 
with boys so much as a distinction in degree. Potent-strategists have 
most of the desirable characteristics, strategists somewhat less, and 
potents even less; but all three groups are superior to fortunists and 
failures. (31)

Sutton-Smith and Roberts (1964) concluded that children can consistently place 
each other into categories based on games and that boys, in particular, play games 
that are analogous to their success styles. Girls tend not distinguish among success 
styles but do so among failure groups.

Roberts, Hoffmann, and Sutton-Smith (1965) then examined playing styles in 
the context of a simple game of pure strategy, tic-tac-toe. In a field experimental 
study, they had each sixth grader in a class play every other twice resulting 
in a total of 313 wins/losses wins and 910 draws. Arithmetic ability related to 
winning play styles while intelligence seemed to be linked to safe play styles 
(i.e., drawing). In a follow up study, Sutton-Smith and Roberts (1967) gave tic-
tac-toe problems (developed earlier by Hoffmann) to girls and boys participating 
in the Achievement Development Project at the Fels Research Institute in Yellow 
Springs, Ohio.1 They found numerous associations between problem solutions 
and children’s play styles. What they termed the “winning girl” was positively 
associated with the instigation of verbal and physical aggression, associative play, 
dominance of other girls, concern with mastery of motor skills, and negatively 
associated with socioeconomic status, the amount of time spent alone on tasks, 
task persistence, and gender-appropriate play choices. The “drawing girl” was 
positively associated with socioeconomic status, need achievement, and gender-
appropriate play but negatively associated with the instigation of physical 
aggression and concern with mastery of motor skills. The “drawing boy” was 
positively associated with need achievement and approval seeking from adults.

In addition to their work on games of strategy and folktales involving strategy, 
Roberts and Sutton-Smith looked at the cross-cultural correlates of games of 
chance more extensively in a 1966 publication, “Cross-Cultural Correlates of 
Games of Chance.” In this study, they used results from a pre-publication version 
of Textor’s (1967) A Cross-Cultural Summary, a huge compendium of computer 
generated comparisons of cross-cultural codes for about 500 variables for 400 
societies selected by the editors of the journal Ethnology. For sampling purposes, 
the ethnographic universe was divided into six geographic regions. These included 
Africa, the Circum-Mediterranean, East Eurasia, the Insular Pacific, North America, 
and South America. While the sample was technically non-random, comparisons 
were accompanied by two measures of association (chi-square and phi) and 
included when the chi-square was significant at the 0.10 level.

CFR_2015_R.indb   14 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

15

A Cross-Cultural Summary (Textor 1967) included 10 comparisons involving 
games, four of which dealt with games of chance. Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1966) 
based their article on those four comparisons. Their most important finding was 
that games of chance appear to be most common in cultural contexts involving 
uncertainty. That is, games of chance occur where “a life situation where favorable 
and unfavorable outcomes may occur in an uncertain way, not easily controlled by 
either physical skill or strategy, particularly in the areas of environmental setting, 
food production, social and political interaction, marriage, war, and religion” 
(Roberts and Sutton-Smith 1966:143).

Sutton-Smith’s fertile collaboration with Roberts culminated in a brief chapter 
in a book edited by Lueschen in 1970 titled “The Cross-Cultural and Psychological 
Study of Games” and a chapter in the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 
edited by Triandis and Heron, in 1981 titled “Play, Games, and Sports.” Sutton-
Smith’s and Roberts’ research in the 1960s, particularly their cross-cultural studies, 
pointed to several conclusions. First, they established an evolutionary sequence of 
game development beginning with, (1) no games, (2) games of physical skill, (3) 
games of chance, and, (4) games of strategy. Roberts et al. (1959) and Roberts and 
Sutton-Smith (1962) reported, with some surprise, that some cultures (e.g., the Yir 
Yiront, the Cuna) genuinely appear not to have games. They concluded that there 
are three possibilities: (1) some societies have never had games, (2) some societies 
have lost their games through deculturation and, (3) the ethnographic reports 
may be in error. Whatever the reason for the no-game reports, later cross-cultural 
comparative research (e.g., Chick 1998; Roberts and Barry 1976) has supported the 
sequence beginning with games of physical skill.

Second, their studies indicated that games are vehicles for socialization and 
cultural learning. Socialization for achievement is associated with the presence 
of games of physical skill and is most often directed at males. Socialization for 
responsibility is associated with the presence of games of chance and is most 
often directed at females. Socialization for obedience is associated with the 
presence of games of strategy and is most often directed at females. And part 
of this socialization is directed at conflict engendered by child rearing practices 
and its assuagement. Different types of games were also found in varied cultural 
complexes. Societies heavily invested in food collection had games of physical 
skill since the games themselves served, at least in part, as models of hunting 
(and war, which could be looked on as a form of hunting) but offered greater 
safety than learning about hunting dangerous big game, for example. Games of 
chance occur in situations where uncertainty is commonly addressed by appeals to 
religious or divinatory practices. And, finally, games of strategy occur in relatively 
complex societies with distinct social strata, higher levels of political integration, 
and relatively complex technology. 

Third, games could be viewed as models of power. That, is boys (although 
not girls) were able to consistently categorize others as strategists, who lead 
through ideas, or potents, who lead through physical prowess. Sutton-Smith and 
Rosenberg (1970) reported that some of the power tactics used by siblings could 
be regarded as primarily strategic while others primarily involved physical ability. 
They argued that if the distinctions between strategic and physical approaches to 

CFR_2015_R.indb   15 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

16

problem solving are present in general social behavior, they are also likely to exist 
in informal play. In a 1968 paper, Sutton-Smith suggested that there are “loose 
parallels” (50) between games of strategy and some daydreams, such as those 
that feature conceptual problem solving and abstract speculation. To some extent, 
this suggestion follows from the finding by Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1963) that 
folktales that have outcomes, in terms of winners and losers, can be examined 
in terms of their content involving physical skill, chance, and, especially, strategy 
on the part of protagonists. Among Western children, “Females prefer magical 
assistance (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty); males prefer personal prowess (Jack and 
the Beanstalk)” (Sutton-Smith 1971:85). Based on this line of research, Sutton-
Smith and Roberts expanded the argument that games are expressive models 
through which children, by participating in them, learn the power tactics of other 
individuals and their cultures more broadly.

While they coauthored summary chapters on games, sport, and play in 
1970 and 1981, Sutton-Smith and Roberts produced no empirical collaborations 
after their 1967 study of tic-tac-toe. For his part, Roberts continued working on 
games, as well as other expressive phenomena, through the 1970s and 1980s 
with numerous other coauthors, including me. His work was heavily influenced 
by the theorizing about child socialization and games developed in his early 
collaboration with Sutton-Smith. In particular, he sought other contexts to test the 
conflict-enculturation hypothesis that they had developed, especially in expressive 
activities among adults. Sutton-Smith, while he did not drop his interest in games, 
spent more of his research efforts on children’s less organized activities (free play, 
folk games, jokes, rhymes, make-believe, folktales, teasing) and, importantly, more 
vigorously approached topics aligned with the philosophy of science, that is, how 
values cultural relativity undergirds how we have theorized play over the years.

Games as Ambiguous Agents of Socialization

Sutton-Smith’s collaboration with Roberts provided one source of empirical 
support for Sutton-Smith’s enduring interest in both how children are socialized 
for play and the power of play to socialize. Whether that socialization was for 
good or bad remained a question and an aspect of play’s ambiguity. This was 
an interest and concern for both Sutton-Smith and Roberts. In his book, Child 
Psychology, Sutton-Smith wrote “in games, children learn all those necessary arts of 
trickery, deception, harassment, divination, and foul play that their teachers won’t 
teach them, but that are most important in successful human interrelationship in 
marriage, business, and war” (Sutton-Smith 1973:356–57). Similarly, Roberts and 
Barry (1976) related combinations of game types to cultural complexity and to 
13 traits inculcated during child training. In the cross-cultural data, they found 
evidence that, in societies where all three game types are present, obedience was 
emphasized over self-reliance or honesty. In contemporary American sports, for 
example, coaches have all but completely usurped decision-making. Hence, there 
is little need for players to be self-reliant. However, coaches value obedience and 
self-restraint. And, as for honesty, coaches teach how to shade the rules without 
getting caught. At both the University of Illinois and Penn State University, I have 

CFR_2015_R.indb   16 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

17

had offensive and defensive linemen from the football teams in class. When asked 
how often offensive linemen are guilty of “holding,” defensive linemen respond 
“on every play” while offensive linemen answer, “never.” Obviously, there is a 
difference in perspective but also in training. Offensive linemen are coached in 
how to hold and not get caught. Roberts and Barry (1976) concluded, “If games 
build character, that character may be less than ideal” (59). As Sutton-Smith so 
often emphasized, ambiguities exist not only in how we study play but in play 
itself.

Summary: Games and the Rhetorics of Play

I chose to emphasize Sutton-Smith’s early studies of games in this essay, in part, 
because it is this area of his research with which I have the greatest familiarity. But 
I also selected it because I feel that these studies illuminated for him the notion 
that the nature of research on play, including his and Roberts’ studies of games, 
had long been deeply affected by what he came to term “rhetorics.” Finally, 
new methods, briefly described below, and updated data render the Roberts 
and Sutton-Smith cross-cultural studies of games and child socialization open to 
replication, something commonly done in the “hard” sciences but neglected in 
the psychological and social sciences (Schmidt 2009) or, when actually attempted, 
which results in a very high percentage of failure (Bohannon 2015).

Games are relatively easy to define and, therefore, identify. For the most part 
in his work, Sutton-Smith adopted the definition provided by Roberts et al. (1959), 
one that rather precisely denotes what is, and what is not, a game. In addition, 
and again for the most part, he adopted Roberts et al.’s (1959) classification of 
games based on the primary outcome determinant, that is, physical skill, strategy, 
or chance. And while he expanded the definition a bit when referring to game-
like activities of young children, he maintained interest in activities involving skill, 
strategy, and chance. He observed that the way in which not only others, but also 
he and Roberts themselves, had examined the three categories of games reflected 
distinct rhetorics. That is, he and Roberts looked at games of physical skill—what 
we would commonly refer to as sports—in terms of the rhetoric of power wherein 
children learn not only the preferred power tactics of their culture as well as how 
to identify them in others. Indeed, at one point, he and Roberts contemplated 
writing a book, tentatively titled, Games as Models of Power. Unfortunately, 
their collaboration ended before the book was written although Sutton-Smith 
contributed a chapter by that name to a Festschrift for Roberts published in 1989. 
In “Games as Models of Power,” Sutton-Smith (1989) interpreted their research 
together as showing:

1. Games are in some way functionally related to culture. They are 
not trivial or unessential or random.

2. More complex cultures have more complex games and more types 
of games, and the various associations are merely an index of 

CFR_2015_R.indb   17 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

18

general complexity—cultures with no competitive games are very 
simple; cultures with all types are the most complex.

3. There are meaningful structural relationships between each type 
of game and its patterns of association. Thus, chance is linked 
with responsibility, divination, nomadic habits, and economic 
uncertainty; physical skill is linked with the tropics and hunting; 
central-person games are linked with independence training and 
marriage; and strategy games are linked with class stratification and 
warfare.

4. The way to explain the linkages with child-training and variables 
and with cultural variables is in terms of the conflict-enculturation 
hypothesis, which says that conflict engendered by child-training 
procedures (one is both rewarded and punished for interest in 
certain behaviors), leads to a readiness to be aroused by symbolic 
systems (games), which configure the conflict (that is, transfer it) to 
culturally useful behavior.

5. The way to prove this pattern of hypotheses is to show that the 
same patterns hold within our own culture across variations 
in personalities as were found across variations in tribes in the 
original studies (subsystem replication). Studies of adult preferences 
for games and of children’s play appear to provide support for the 
original patterns of relationships. See, in particular, the studies of 
Tick Tack Toe in The Folkgames of Children (Sutton-Smith 1972).

6. The way the enculturation aspect of this thesis works is through 
games acting as models of cultural power relationships, including 
those involving strategy, chance, force, or arbitrary status (4–5).

Sutton-Smith went on to critique these studies and their conclusions based on 
post-1970 research and theorizing. More important, however, is that he recognized 
that the studies themselves were grounded in the then-extant view that play is an 
ideal activity for children rather than one that is to be maligned and avoided as in 
previous times and other cultures (see Sutton-Smith and Kelly-Byrne 1984). Thus, 
with respect to games, “When Roberts and I called them models of power, we 
were becoming victims of our own and other males’ macho rhetoric […]” (Sutton-
Smith 1989, 13). Further, with respect to games, he claimed that

In their own strange ways, they embody tenderness in their affairs 
as well as toughness. They make players love each other, or love 
their coaches, or love their supporters, as much as they make them 
hate each other. What shall we call them: the games as models of 
toughness and tenderness? Perhaps games as models of Power and 
Pusillanimity? (13) 

CFR_2015_R.indb   18 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

19

In his later writings, Sutton-Smith included his studies of games of strategy 
coauthored with Roberts under “play as rational power” (Sutton-Smith 1997:82). 
In tic-tac-toe, chess, or go, for example, each player assesses and anticipates the 
moves of the other with the winners doing so better than the losers. In a semi 
real-world context, military exercises, or “war games,” are at least as much about 
strategy as physical force. However, while Sutton-Smith (1997) allowed that 
research on play, including games, could involve more than one of the seven 
rhetorics, he did not delve deeply into the ways in which games of strategy relate 
to progress except as indicated in the quote above regarding children’s exposure 
to trickery, deception, and foul play. But learning about the unsavory aspects of 
life must be a form of progress lest one be constantly duped by others throughout 
life. Moreover, as Roberts and I showed in a 1986 study of the play of pool in 
western Pennsylvania barrooms, even in a game that would be classified as one 
of physical skill in the Roberts et al. (1959) scheme, the importance of strategy 
increases as expertise increases (Chick and Roberts 1986). Similarly, Roberts 
often claimed that players who treated poker as a game of chance were doomed 
when facing others who regarded it as a game of strategy. So, the nature of 
games themselves changes for players as their expertise increases. Learning about 
strategy and how to use it certainly seems to be adaptive even if it may not fit our 
everyday notion of progress being something positive and good.

Finally, the studies of games of chance by Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962; 
1966) fall squarely within the rhetoric of fate although, interestingly, he cites 
neither in his chapter on the rhetoric of fate in The Ambiguity of Play. This is a 
curious omission, particularly since he and Roberts derived the notion of player 
styles that include both fortunist and failure in these papers. To a significant extent 
this may be because Sutton-Smith distanced himself from his cross-cultural studies 
of games in the 1960s with Roberts. In part, he understood that “the correlational 
nature of these power findings makes the meaning of the empirical relationships 
discovered quite uncertain” (Sutton-Smith 1997:82–83). Moreover, he recognized 
that “the widespread and easy diffusion of all kinds of games in modern life 
strongly suggest that additional principles may be required to understand the ways 
in which games as models come into being” (1997:82). This latter observation 
is well known to cross-cultural researchers, particularly experts such as Roberts, 
as “Galton’s Problem.” In 1889, Edward Tylor presented a paper to the Royal 
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland wherein he correlated 
data on forms of marriage and descent for 350 societies from the ethnographic 
literature. He interpreted the correlations as indicators of an evolutionary 
sequence. The statistician, Sir Francis Galton, who was in the audience, disagreed 
by pointing out that the correlations could be due to diffusion among societies 
or common descent rather than independent development. While this might 
reasonably be thought of as a problem for Tylor, it has come to be known as 
Galton’s Problem (Stocking 1968:175).

There are other difficulties with cross-cultural comparative research. The 
validity of the initial ethnographic descriptions must always be a concern as 
should both the validity and reliability of the codes developed from them. Missing 
data, which is very common in such research, is also a major problem. Fortunately, 

CFR_2015_R.indb   19 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

20

Galton’s Problem and the problem of missing data have recently been addressed, 
if perhaps not absolutely solved, in a series of publications by Dow and Eff (2009) 
and others by incorporating autocorrelation routines in multiple regression analysis 
to address the former and multiple imputation of missing data for the latter. While 
these techniques have not yet been used in an effort to replicate the studies by 
Roberts and Sutton-Smith from the 1960s, doing so seems like a worthy task. 
Updated ratings for both child training variables and games are coded for the 
Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS) (Murdock and White 1969) and the Dow-
Eff software for conducting regression analyses of SCCS data is readily available.

Cross-cultural comparative research has the great advantage of being 
inexpensive to do. Many universities around the world have access to the 
electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF), the cross-cultural database whose 
precursor Roberts and Sutton-Smith used in several of their studies and which has 
an excellent interface for keyword and other kinds of searches that greatly aid 
coding. This makes cross-cultural studies excellent vehicles for the initial testing 
of hypotheses. And, as indicated earlier in this essay, their cross-cultural studies 
led Roberts and Sutton-Smith to attempt to reproduce their findings in subsystem 
replications.

I believe that Sutton-Smith’s great and enduring contribution is not that he 
once-and-for-all defined play or that he determined its origin, what it is good 
for, and so on. Instead, he is the theorist most responsible for showing that how 
we think about play, and therefore the kinds of data we collect and the sorts of 
theories we produce, is heavily influenced by our presuppositions, values, and 
culture. He summarized this well in the following quote:

The point of view taken in this work, however, is that all of the 
rhetorics, whether modern or ancient, are based on or are simulacra of 
play forms, and all should be taken into account in any truly empirical 
examination of the character and functioning of play. (Sutton-Smith 
1997:53)

But, what of the series of studies that Sutton-Smith produced in collaboration 
with Roberts in the 1960s? Should they be disregarded, in terms of their empirical 
results, and simply be included as examples of the rhetorics from which they 
emerged? I, for one, think, as Sutton-Smith taught us, that understanding the 
theoretical context that gives birth to particular projects is of critical importance. 
As Sutton-Smith (1997) noted, this is similar to Kuhn’s (1970) observation that 
science is not as objective or cumulative as commonly believed. Indeed, one 
could think of Sutton-Smith’s “rhetorics” as quite similar to Kuhn’s “paradigms.” 
But I also think that the Roberts and Sutton-Smith studies of the 1960s can have a 
place in current thinking about play. Their field experimental studies of tic-tac-toe 
can still stand on their own and other research suggests that the trichotomization 
of power styles into potent, strategist, fortunist, along with combined forms, has 
predictive validity in terms of behavior in winning/losing at tennis (Widmeyer 
and Loy 1989), soccer (Roberts and Luxbacher 1982) and in automobile driving 
patterns (Roberts, Thompson, and Sutton-Smith 1966). Their cross-cultural studies 

CFR_2015_R.indb   20 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

21

relating game types to child socialization variables could now be done with much 
greater confidence in the results. More recent cross-cultural research lends support 
to the physical skill-chance-strategy evolutionary sequence of game development 
(Chick 1998). Revisiting these studies seems warranted particularly when guided 
by knowledge and understanding of the rhetorics described by Sutton-Smith.

Conclusion: Brian Sutton-Smith and the Character of Play

The English word “play” has multiple meanings and is also commonly used as 
different forms of speech. These include as a noun (e.g., going to a play by 
Shakespeare, children’s play, a play on words), a verb (the children play hide-and-
seek, the setting sunlight played over the surface of the lake), an adjective (a play 
house), and various derivatives of these (e.g., gerunds, participles). Sutton-Smith’s 
early goal was to make some sort of sense of all of this. What is play? What is its 
origin? How did it evolve? What is it good for? I believe that he addressed these 
questions relatively directly in his early work on games but paused in his quest 
later in his career in order to look instead at how play has been theorized over the 
years. In his magnum opus, The Ambiguity of Play, Sutton-Smith (1997) sought “to 
understand the general character of play theory” (12), as noted above, rather than 
the character of play itself, largely because of the ambiguity of play as well as the 
ambiguities in play theories. Both missions have merit but Sutton-Smith was surely 
correct in demonstrating that, without knowing where we have been, it is difficult 
to know where we are going. His work has lit the path. It now seems reasonable 
to retrace some of his early steps along it.

In 1992, I delivered my presidential address to The Association for the Study of 
Play (TASP), a group that Sutton-Smith, along with Roberts and others, helped to 
establish in 1974. My title was “Play as Science and the Science of Play” and, in the 
presentation, I stated

Scientists play with ideas, or at least they ought to, and children learn 
though play, though they do not always learn what we want them to. 
… In my career to date I have had the opportunity to work with a 
number of bright and creative individuals and they all seem to share 
a player’s outlook on the world. Among my colleagues, John M. 
Roberts and Brian Sutton-Smith are the two most outstanding scholars 
with whom I have had the good fortune to work and to play. Each, 
a consummate player in his own way, brought or, in Brian’s case, 
continues to bring that worldview to their research. While my sample 
of two is small (even by interpretive standards), I judge that scientists 
must be players and, in their own way, children at play are scientists. 
(Chick 1993:99)

Sutton-Smith was one of the fortunate individuals who manage to retain a childlike 
curiosity as well as a playful personality well into old age. Because of this, he 
was able, based on his youth in New Zealand, his research as an adult, and his 
playful disposition, to examine the phenomenon of play as both an insider and 

CFR_2015_R.indb   21 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

22

an external observer, or from emic and etic perspectives. It is difficult to imagine 
how a play theorist, researcher, and advocate could find himself in a better 
circumstance.

NOTES

1. The Fels Research Institute was founded in 1929 with support from the Fels 
Fund of Philadelphia. It housed a complex project known as the Fels Longitudinal 
Study which was devoted to research on the physical and psychological growth 
and maturation of children. Psychological data were no longer collected after 
1974 and, in 1977, the study became a part of Wright State University’s School of 
Medicine (Wright State University 2015).

WORKS CITED

Bacon, Margaret K., Herbert Barry III, and Irvin L. Child. 1955. Cross-Cultural 
Ratings of Certain Socialization Practices. Unpublished manuscript.

Bohannon, John. 2015. “Many Psychological Papers Fail Replication Test.” Science 
349 (6251):910–11.

Brown, Donald E. 1991. Human Universals. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University 
Press. 

Chick, Garry. 1993. “Play as Science and the Science of Play.” Play Theory & 
Research 1:89–101.

________. 1998. “Games in Culture Revisited: A Replication and Extension of 
Roberts, Arth, and Bush (1959).” Cross-Cultural Research 32:185–206.

________, ed. 1991. “Play & Culture: Studies in Honor of Brian Sutton-Smith.” Play 
& Culture 4 (2, 3, and 4).

Chick, Garry, and John M. Roberts. 1986. “Strategy and Competence: Changing 
Determinants of Game Outcomes.” In The Many Faces of Play, edited by 
Kendall Blanchard, 255–64. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.

Child, Irvin L., Storn, Thomas, and Veroff, Joseph. 1958. “Achievement Themes 
in Folk Tales Related to Socialization Practice.” In Motives in Fantasy, 
Action, and Society, edited by John W. Atkinson, 479–92. Princeton, NJ: Van 
Nostrand.

Cooper, John M. 1949. “A Cross-Cultural Survey of South American Indian tribes: 
Games and Gambling.” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143:503–24.

Culin, Stuart. 1891. “Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, NY.” Journal of American 
Folklore 4 (14):221–37.

________. 1895. Korean Games: With Notes on the Corresponding Games of China 
and Japan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

________. 1899. “Hawaiian Games.” American Anthropologist 1:201–47.
________. 1903. “American Indian Games.” American Anthropologist 5:58–64.
________. 1975 [1907]. Games of the North American Indians. Vol. 24. North 

Chelmsford, MA: Courier Corporation.

CFR_2015_R.indb   22 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

23

Dow, Malcolm M., and E. Anthon Eff. 2009. “Cultural Trait Transmission and 
Missing Data as Sources of Bias in Cross-Cultural Research: Explanations of 
Polygyny Re-examined.” Cross-Cultural Research 43:134–51.

Dunlap, Helen L. 1951. “Games, Sports, and Other Vigorous Recreational Activities 
and their Function in Samoan Culture.” Research Quarterly 22:298–311.

Firth, Raymond. 1930. “A Dart Match in Tikopia: A Study in the Sociology of 
Primitive Sport.” Oceania 1:64–96.

Heron, Alastair, and Harry C. Triandis, eds. 1981. Handbook of Cross-Cultural 
Psychology, Vol. 4: Developmental Psychology. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: 
University of Chicago Press.

Lueschen, Gunther, ed. 1970. The Cross-Cultural Analysis of Sport and Games. 
Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company.

Meckley, Alice M. 2015. “A Student’s Guide for Understanding Play through the 
Theories of Brian Sutton-Smith.” In The Handbook of the Study of Play, Vol. 
2, edited by James E. Johnson, Scott G. Eberle, Thomas S. Hendricks, and 
David Kuschner, 393–405. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Morgan, Lewis H. 1851. League of the Iroquois. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.
Murdock, George P. 1945. “The Common Denominator of Culture.” In The Science 

of Man in the World Crisis, edited by Ralph Linton, 123–42. New York: 
Columbia University Press.

Pellegrini, Anthony D., ed. 1995. The Future of Play Theory: A Multidisciplinary 
Inquiry into the Contributions of Brian Sutton-Smith. Albany, NY: SUNY 
Press.

Raum, Otto F. 1953. “The Rolling Target (Hoop-and-Pole) Game in Africa.” African 
Studies 12:104–21.

Roberts, John M., Malcolm J. Arth, and Robert R. Bush. 1959. “Games in Culture.” 
American Anthropologist 61:597–605.

Roberts, John M., and Herbert Barry III. 1976. “Inculcated Traits and Game-Type 
Combinations: A Cross-Cultural View.” In The Humanistic and Mental Health 
Aspects of Sport, Exercise, and Recreation, edited by Timothy T. Craig, 5–11. 
Chicago, IL: American Medical Association.

Roberts, John M., Hans Hoffmann, and Brian Sutton-Smith. 1965. “Pattern and 
Competence: A Consideration of Tick Tack Toe.” El Palacio 72 (2):27–41.

Roberts, John M., and Joseph A. Luxbacher. 1982. “Offensive and Defensive 
Perspectives in Soccer.” In The Paradoxes of Play, edited by J. W. Loy, 225–
38. West Point, NY: Leisure Press.

Roberts, John M., and Brian Sutton-Smith. 1962. “Child Training and Game 
Involvement.” Ethnology 1:166–85.

________. 1966. “Cross-Cultural Correlates of Games of Chance.” Behavior Science 
Notes 1:131–44.

Roberts, John M., Brian Sutton-Smith, and Adam Kendon. 1963. “Strategy in Games 
and Folk Tales.” Journal of Social Psychology 61:185–99.

Roberts, John M., Wayne Thompson, and Brian Sutton-Smith. 1966. “Expressive 
Self-Testing in Driving.” Human Organization 25:54–63.

CFR_2015_R.indb   23 11/22/15   10:41 AM



Games and Their rheTorics chick 

24

Schmidt, Stefan. 2009. “Shall We Really Do It Again? The Powerful Concept 
of Replication is Neglected in the Social Sciences.” Review of General 
Psychology 13:90–100.

Stocking Jr., George W. 1968. “Edward Burnett Tylor.” In International 
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by David L. Sills and Robert K. 
Merton, 170–77. New York: Macmillan.

Stumpf, Florence, and Fredrick W. Cozens. 1947. “Some Aspects of the Role of 
Games, Sports, and Recreational Activities in the Culture of Modern Primitive 
Peoples: The New Zealand Maori.” Research Quarterly 18:198–218.

________. 1949. “Some Aspects of the Role of Games, Sports, and Recreational 
Activities in the Culture of Modern Primitive Peoples: The Fijians.” Research 
Quarterly 20:2–20.

Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1951a. “The Meeting of Maori and European Cultures and 
its Effects upon the Unorganized Games of Maori Children.” Journal of the 
Polynesian Society 60 (2/3):93–107.

________. 1951b. “New Zealand Variants of the Game—’Buck Buck’.” Folklore 
62:329–33.

________. 1953a. “Traditional Games of New Zealand Children.” Folklore 64:411–
23.

________. 1953b. “Marbles Are In: Some Observations on the ‘Seasonal’ Nature of 
Children’s Games in New Zealand.” Western Folklore 12 (3):186–93.

________. 1959. The Games of New Zealand Children. Berkeley: University of 
California Press.

________. 1968. “Games—Play—Daydreams.” Quest 10 (1):47–58.
________. 1971. “The Expressive Profile.” Journal of American Folklore 84:80–92.
________. 1973. Child Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century Croft.
________. 1989. “Games as Models of Power.” In The Content of Culture: Constants 

and Variants: Studies in Honor of John M. Roberts, edited by Ralph Bolton, 
3–18. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. 

________. 1993a. “Suggested Rhetorics in Adult Play Theories.” Journal of Play 
Theory & Research 1:102–16.

________. 1993b. “Play Rhetorics and Toy Rhetorics.” Journal of Play Theory & 
Research 1:239–50.

________. 1995. “Conclusion: The Persuasive Rhetorics of Play.” In The Future 
of Play Theory: A Multidisciplinary Inquiry into the Contributions of Brian 
Sutton-Smith, edited by Anthony D. Pellegrini, 275–95. Albany, NY: SUNY 
Press.

________. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
________. 2008. “Play Theory: A Personal Journal and New Thoughts.” American 

Journal of Play 1:80–123.
Sutton-Smith, Brian, and, Diana Kelly-Byrne. 1984. “The idealization of play.” In 

Play in Animals and Humans, edited by Peter K. Smith, 305–21. London: 
Basil Blackwell.

Sutton-Smith, Brian, John M. Roberts, and Robert M. Kozelka. 1963. “Game 
Involvement in Adults.” Journal of Social Psychology 60:15–30.

CFR_2015_R.indb   24 11/22/15   10:41 AM



ChiCk  Games and Their rheToriCs

25

Sutton-Smith, Brian, and John M. Roberts. 1964. “Rubrics of Competitive Behavior.” 
Journal of Genetic Psychology 105:13–37.

________. 1967. “Studies of an Elementary Game of Strategy.” Genetic Psychology 
Monographs 75:3–42.

________. 1970. “The Cross-Cultural and Psychological Study of Games.” In The 
Cross-Cultural Analysis of Sport and Games, edited by Gunther Lueschen, 
100–8. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company.

________. 1981. “Play, Games, and Sports.” In Handbook of Cross-Cultural 
Psychology, Vol. 4: Developmental Psychology, edited by Alastair Heron and 
Harry C. Triandis, 425–71. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.

Sutton-Smith, Brian, and Benjamin G Rosenberg. 1970. The Sibling. Oxford, U.K.: 
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

________. 1961. “Sixty Years of Historical Change in the Game Preferences of 
American Children.” Journal of American Folklore 74 (291):17–46.

Textor, Robert B. 1967. A Cross-Cultural Summary. New Haven, CT: Human 
Relations Area Files.

Tylor, Edward B. 1879. “On the Game of Patolli in Ancient Mexico, and its 
Probably Asiatic Origin.” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great 
Britain and Ireland 8:116–31.

Widmeyer, W. Neil, and John W. Loy. 1989. “Dynamic Duos: An Analysis of the 
Relationship between Group Composition and Group Performance in 
Women’s Doubles Tennis Teams.” In The Content of Culture: Constants and 
Variants: Studies in Honor of John M. Roberts, edited by Ralph Bolton, 77–99. 
New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files.

Wright State University, Boonshoft School of Medicine 2015. “Fels Longitudinal 
Study History.” https://medicine.wright.edu/lifespan-health-research-center/
fels-longitudinal-study/history. Accessed 6 September 2015.

CFR_2015_R.indb   25 11/22/15   10:41 AM


	CFR_2015_Part2_Part2
	CFR_2015_Part3
	CFR_2015_Part4
	CFR_2015_Part5
	CFR_2015_Part6
	Pages from CFR_2015_Part7



