In the second analogy, from an enactionist perspective, culture could be seen as more like a game of Scrabble, with the board representing the social context or environment and the letters representing the individual player’s potential contribution to the social context (the board) from the social experiences and biological limitations available at the moment of play (the letter tiles each player has been dealt). Because individuals live in historically situated moments, the first word is already in place and constrains the first move of the individuals participating. The first player both constrains and provides opportunities for the second player and so on. In a fashion similar to the game, culture is dynamic and the outcome is not entirely dependent on luck (or scripting or predestination), so individual skill and creativity can change the course of the game—even with many constraints imposed by the other players.

These two examples of “habitus as unfolding drama” and “habitus as Scrabble” demonstrate different sets of expectations individuals form about the social performance of roles. In the analogy of “habitus as unfolding drama,” individuals tend to see interactions and behaviors in more binary terms of “right/not right,” whereas in the example of “habitus as Scrabble,” individuals tend to see participants’ behaviors as a more probabilistic, less certain, set of possible outcomes in response to catalysts or causes. In other words, enactionists see culture less as “a play” than as “the play” between three never fully predictable players: environment, individuals, and social groups. This Scrabble analogy for the concept of habitus demonstrates how individual behaviors can effect the shift in cultural cognition necessary to recognize domestic abuse and violence as socially and individually disruptive when for centuries these have been culturally condoned behaviors. This enactionist view of habitus demonstrates why each situation in which abuse or violence is resisted reinforces behaviors and beliefs supporting future attempts to avoid abuse and violence.