Our past shapes how we see our future: previous experiences can constrain our ability to imagine lives different from current reality for ourselves and for others. Overcoming this limitation is especially urgent today, given rapid technological and societal change. This same capacity to imagine allows us to better understand and relate to others in and beyond our communities.
Study Description
We develop a curriculum – Guided Mental Experiencing – to train individuals’ capacity to mentally simulate the steps required to achieve a better economic life. We test the curriculum in two large-scale randomized controlled trials, uncovering positive effects on economic outcomes among victims of conflict and displacement in Columbia and refugees in Ethiopia.
Curriculum take-aways
- Guided Mental Experiencing Curriculum designed to address the avoidance of planning concretely for the near future
- Ethiopia: exercises to image a potential life in Ethiopia in the immediate term and practice the steps that can be taken to access economic opportunities in this context
- Colombia: leveraging mental experiencing in the context of entrepreneurship, with each session centres on a particular topic such as requesting a loan or brainstorming products