How to pronounce "roleplaying"

And this is another example in a healthcare environment

of some doctors and some nurses and designers

acting out a service scenario around patient care.

But you know, many adults

are pretty reluctant to engage with role-play.

Some of it’s embarrassment and some of it is because

they just don’t believe that what emerges is necessarily valid.

They dismiss an interesting interaction by saying,

you know, "That’s just happening because they’re acting it out."

Research into kids' behavior actually suggests

that it’s worth taking role-playing seriously.

Because when children play a role,

they actually follow social scripts quite closely

that they’ve learnt from us as adults.

If one kid plays "store," and another one’s playing "house,"

then the whole kind of play falls down.

So they get used to quite quickly

to understanding the rules for social interactions,

and are actually quite quick to point out when they’re broken.

So when, as adults, we role-play,

then we have a huge set of these scripts already internalized.