Who was behind this experiment?

• Fast Familiar, formerly fanSHEN (lead)
• Seven Stories (partner)

What was the experiment?

Together with a group of young adults and the organisation Seven Stories, Fast Familiar co-created ‘If I Were You’. The intervention combined digital storytelling and small-group discussions. The experiment was designed to test whether blending these different methods could foster students’ capacity for perspective taking.

What did they find?

In the post-debrief survey, 84% of the participants reported that the experiment made them think about taking other people’s perspective. For roughly half of the participants, taking part felt like watching a film or playing a game - implying a sense of doing something for fun and entertainment - an important consideration for engaging this age group. For about a quarter, it felt like making real life decisions.

Why is it relevant?

Making the right decisions together requires understanding different perspectives, being able to reflect on our own opinions, and disagreeing productively. But finding solutions requires ideas to be accepted across opinion boundaries. Achieving this demands better insights into how collective reasoning and perspective-taking can be fostered in a real-world context.

Follow Fast Familiar and Seven Stories on Twitter: @FastFamiliar and @7Stories