A laboratory for social experiments

Meaningful conversations are often high-stakes: helping someone process loss, giving difficult feedback, expressing needs that might not be met. Perhaps this is why so many everyday interactions can feel shallow: we unconsciously avoid anything that might tip into what’s uncomfortable to talk about, leaving us circling safe topics that don’t really matter. But like any complex skill, navigating emotional conversations becomes easier with practice. You can’t practice surgery on living patients. What you then need is a laboratory where you can experiment safely.

A classic and simple example is the Curiosity Game. Here you are paired up and in turns one player gets to ask questions of the other for a set period. As a rule, they may only ask questions they are actually curious about. This may seem too simple to be something to learn from, but that’s the real power of the game: abandoning the more complex unspoken ‘rules’ of regular small talk by not having to guess at why the game is being played.

Maybe you’ve had the experience of being on a date where one person is asking all the questions and the other just answering them, while both are uncomfortably asking themselves why this is happening. In the game though, the explicit intention given by the facilitator is just to experience what exploring genuine curiosity is like, which can feel incredibly refreshing and leads to better dates outside the lab! There are many examples of long-term partners playing the Curiosity Game who come away having learnt truly novel things about each other.

Most people avoid uncomfortable or unfamiliar conversational territory. This is partly out of the childhood instinct to stay in what’s comfortable. And in part, the anxiety comes from the reasonable recognition that experimenting in high-stakes relationships is actually really risky. Trying a new approach with your boss or partner could damage relationships that matter. AR games make it easier to experiment by providing a laboratory with formal structures where experimentation is safe. Here you can practice vulnerability, boundary-setting, or directness with clear agreements and time limits.

But there’s more to it than just providing safety: they also teach you how to create these structured containers in everyday life, so you can bring difficult conversations into your important relationships with greater skill and awareness. It might still be risky, but with awareness and skill, the risk becomes much more manageable. That’s what building skill looks like.