ECCAY RESOURCES
Exercise nr. 26
WHO IS THIS?
|
Minimum number of participants |
Average time length | Individual setting |
Group setting | Special Equipment | Unit | Online | Challenges/ competition |
| 5-20 persons (online) | 20 min-40 min | no | yes | Photos of different people | 1,5 | yes | no |
This exercise is about showing presuppositions and preconceived opinions about others. Participants will be shown photos of 5 or more persons they do not know with the trainer, instead, pretending to know these people.
The facilitator appeals to the participants’ knowledge of human nature and invites them to describe the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, occupation, social network etc. of the shown people.
Then, the facilitator reveals that the persons are also unknown to him/her.
Consequently, the effect of stereotypes and prejudices is discussed and reflected. This leads to the recognition that presuppositions are not immovable but changeable, that questioning these can allow new ideas and mindsets.
Aim / Benefits
It helps show how personal and social dominant narratives affect the way we face what is unknown to us.
UNIT(s) related
Why
This exercise can be related to Unit 1 as it facilitates deconstruction of supposed knowledge and of the belief of the existence of an universal truth, and can be seen as one first step towards new ideas or mindsets. As the pictures of unknown persons evokes stories and presuppositions, this exercise shows the subjective that subjective stories are constructed - they differ within the group and therefore can be deconstructed and can be re-written.
This exercise can be related to Unit 5 as questioning individual stereotypes and presuppositions are part of self-reflexion.
How to do the exercise
(MANDATORY to explain how to prepare and introduce the exercise to the participant)
Prepare more or less five photos of different people; be aware to show diverse types, ages and sexes. We recommend not using Don’t use black/white photos nor obvious model pictures - the more realistic the picture seems, the more stories of the “real life” behind it may be constructed and told.
Step 2
Tell the participants that you know all the persons that will be now presented. Show the first photo to all participants – you can show it with a beamer or let the photograph pass through; then ask them to make assumptions about this person based on their knowledge of human nature. Ask questions about their strengths, weaknesses, traits, occupations etc. Take a few minutes to get as many assumptions as possible from the participants.
Do the same procedure with each photo.
Sometimes you can see that participants are competing with each other to who can best guess the characteristics of the people shown.
Step 3:
After the trainer announces that the persons are not known to him/her either, the participants are often disappointed because they want to know the "truth". Be careful: some of the participants might be wondering about the fact that the facilitator is lying to them; so you have to explain very detailed that pretending to know those persons on the photograph is essential for this exercise. People start to guess the “one and only” truth about the persons – this puts the people on the photographs closer to a real-life-story that can be guessed. Of course you can do this exercise without pretending to know the people on the photos but in our experience participants make less effort to really guess then.
The fact that they discover there is no known solution brings the focus on the deconstruction and construction of presuppositions and also alternative stories, where otherwise the attention would be drawn to the "correctness" of the stories.
Final step / Conclusion:
Now you can question together why people immediately have so many images, ideas and attributions to people they do not know.
You can highlight the idea of “dominant narratives” (see Unit 1) and how they affect our perceptions of ourselves and of other.
Print
eccay-curriculum-en.pdf