ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1645213
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Interface Between Social Psychology and Educational Psychology: Interactional Phenomena in Educational SettingsView all 9 articles
Exploring the Impact of Role-Playing Exercises on Cognitive and Emotional Processes: A Social-and Educational Psychological Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Psychology and Social Work, Faculty of Human Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden
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This study investigates the educational potential of role-playing exercises in addressing complex social phenomena such as attitude change, stereotyping, conformity, and racism. Building on prior research demonstrating the efficacy of role-play in reducing prejudice, this study aims to explore how such activities influence both cognitive and emotional engagement with these issues. The methodology included observation and evaluation of a professionally facilitated role-playing activity simulating the experience of being a refugee, conducted at an outdoor museum. Follow-up focus group interviews were conducted two to three years after the participants, students from local secondary schools engaged in the exercise. The findings indicate that the role-play had a lasting impact on students' Begränsad delning perceptions of forced migration and asylum seeking. Participants reported both cognitive insights and emotional responses, including empathy and personal reflection, as well as moments of detachment. The role-playing event was consistently described as one of the most memorable educational activities during their school years. A key implication from the evaluation and interviews is that, for role-playing to be an effective pedagogical tool in addressing sensitive topics such as xenophobia and prejudice, careful planning and structured facilitation are crucial to ensure meaningful and constructive outcomes.
Keywords: Role play activities, Cognitive insight, Emotional insight, Mixed-method approach, educational psychology, social psychology
Received: 11 Jun 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Löfstrand and Zakrisson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Pär Löfstrand, Department of Psychology and Social Work, Faculty of Human Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden
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