To What Extent Do You Think Social Simulations and Role-Playing

Essay

To what extent do you think social simulations and role-playing scenarios risk inducing participants' idealizations or normative beliefs regarding the types of people they would like to be, or what they expect others to be like, rather than accurate representations of how participants would behave if the same situation occurred in real life? That is, in simulations and role-playing scenarios, are participants more likely to base their behavior on subjective (what others think you should do) and injunctive norms (what you think you ought to do), rather than descriptive norms (what you and other people actually do)? In other words, since simulations obviously occur in a controlled laboratory setting, are participants more likely to alter their behavior, even slightly, to improve the self-image they present to the experimenter, or to conform to certain group norms? How problematic is this possibility? How likely is this possibility?