Play and Creativity Run on Free Energy
Neuroscience and the Jack-in-the-Box.
Posted May 28, 2026 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
If you had to name a song that swiftly calls to mind a toy, what would it be?
Some might nominate the bouncy bubblegum single, “I’m a Barbie Girl” (“Life in plastic / It’s fantastic!” ). Farther back, the post-war generation will remember Elvis Presley’s coy R and B dance classic, “Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear” (“Cuddle me real tight ….”). Or you might retrieve the creepy stuffed-toys-coming-alive tune “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” (“If you go down in the woods today / You’re sure of a big surprise…”).
But hands down, the melody and rhythm that most closely remind us of a classic plaything and the surprises that play promises? It must be the punctuated song “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Wind the crank. The melody builds. “All around the cobbler’s bench / The monkey chased the weasel / The monkey thought ‘twas all in fun…” Tension gathers in both the coiled steel and the listeners’ emotion . Then, abruptly, the Jack-in-the-Box figure springs free: “ POP goes the weasel!” Delighting in keen expectation and the surprise that follows, the 3-year-old, wound-up with edgy potential energy, will demand, “Again!” And again.
It seems like a paradox, but play thrives on pleasurable surprise even when it’s predictable.
The Challenge From Neuroscience
Cutting -edge neuroscience offers a fascinating twist and a challenge that bears some noodling. Current models of perception posit that our minds are not passive video-cameras that take in the unfolding scene, moment-to-micromoment.
Instead, our brains act more like “prediction machines” that smooth our expectations as they look for predictability. Disorder is confusing. Chaos is alarming. Unpredictability may even be dangerous if we guess wrong . After all, natural selection punishes the unwary and the unobservant.
Thus, our brain/minds resist the disorderly and the chaotic—states that cognitive theorists have termed “free-energy.” The British theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston explained, “Value is inversely proportional to surprise.” Surprises, for Friston and other like thinkers, add up to “prediction errors.” And so, they explain, to navigate uncertainty and reduce free energy, our brain/minds must scheme to impose an order that minimizes surprise.
In this view, our perceptions seem more anchored than freed.
Play and Learning Run on Free Energy
Yet play runs on free energy. Without unpredictable, surprising timing, its mechanical punchline, the Jack-in-the-Box would not be fun for long. If the outcome did not hang in the balance, a hand of poker would not hold much promise. A run down the mogul course wouldn’t offer much reward without suspense.
Without caprice, play wouldn’t offer much in the way of learning, either.
Think of the toy tower built of blocks, for example. Players wonder how high it can reach, testing how precariously it may totter before falling, intuiting the force of gravity and the ingenuity of the structure they have assembled. Players build their understanding along the way, reaping benefit by maximizing surprise, testing its limit. Similar suspenseful games like Pick-up-Sticks and Kerplunk counsel patience and train dexterity, of course, but they also instruct in cause-and-effect and educate our risk tolerance.
One stray choice and the whole pile goes kerplunk.
The Fortunate Mistake
A phrase in Latin covers this: the felix culpa , the fortunate mistake, the happy error that opens understanding and propels innovation.
If Alexander Fleming had been tidier with his culture dishes, he’d never have discovered penicillin. Chemists searching for a durable synthetic rubber suitable for tires instead synthesized a gooey, pinkish mess. But capitalizing on a prediction error, clever marketers discovered what? You guessed it—Silly Putty. And then there’s the one about serendipitously contaminating the chocolate bar with peanut butter, an unexpected, tasty mashup.
So does play violate our very nature, bucking the trend toward orderly thinking? Nothing could be farther from the truth. It turns out that for the alert, playful mind, harnessing free energy is the gateway to creativity .
Free Energy Journeys in Time
The free energy principle is ambitious as explanation as it encompasses a time scale of nine magnitudes across a human life span and twice that for the evolution of life on earth. The span from femtoseconds to eons is a long time.
The doors to perception open at the interval of milliseconds as our senses register, sample, sort, and interpret the flood of visual, aural, and tactile information that floats us along, safely and predictably, in the torrent. Prediction is protection. Letting us distinguish usefully between surprise and shock, and let’s say, between a pickleball bouncing in our direction and a hand grenade arching forward.
Over millions of years, the free energy principle claims, this protective effect has guided the evolution of species, again weeding out the reckless. Its implications taken in full, this unified brain theory adds up to a kind of philosophy of evolution. The survival of the cautious.
So, the question is fair to ask: Do built-in protective effects edge toward inflexibility? Unchecked rigidity is undeniably advantageous in sessile organisms. People, though, are rarely happy as clams. For us restless mammals, whether rigidity arises in the temptations of the echo chamber or the various traps of dogma, stiffness is mostly harmful and maladaptive.
Play Against Rigidity
This is not to forget that play tallies its own costs. For starters, and basically, play is notoriously risky, diverting energy from main tasks like finding food and shelter, or daring us to test our limits, sometimes dangerously. “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines !”
But play compensates. Not only with the dividends of learning and innovation, but also in emotional rewards that in themselves prove protective and beneficial. A generous sense of humor or a keen feel for irony helps us weather rough spots. Play affords respite and release as we sometimes zone out in a timeless space that renews us. (In these instances, play is truly re- creation .) Play blows off steam. Playful charm makes it easier to find friendship or romance.
Play resists the drag of prediction effects, reveling in undermining the guardrails against “prediction errors.” Because play cultivates surprises, play rescues us from boredom and inertia.
Or put it this way: Pop! goes the weasel.
Karl Friston, “The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory?” Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2010).
Ralph Lewis, “Prediction, Survival, and the Origins of Feeling,” Psychology Today (March 4, 2026).
Scott G. Eberle, “The Elements of Play: Toward a Philosophy and a Definition of Play,” American Journal of Play (2014). https://www.museumofplay.org/app/uploads/2022/01/6-2-article-elements-o…
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Scott G. Eberle, Ph.D. , is the vice president for play studies at The Strong, editor of its American Journal of Play , and lead contributor to its re:Play Blog .
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