This study investigates the educational potential of role-playing exercises in addressing complex social phenomena such as attitude change, stereotyping, conformity, and racism. Building on prior research demonstrating the efficacy of role-play in reducing prejudice, this study aims to explore how such activities influence both cognitive and emotional engagement with these issues. The methodology included observation and evaluation of a professionally facilitated role-playing activity simulating the experience of being a refugee, conducted at an outdoor museum. Follow-up focus group interviews were conducted 2-3 years after the participants, students from local secondary schools engaged in the exercise. The findings indicate that the role-play had a lasting impact on students' perceptions of forced migration and asylum seeking. Participants reported both cognitive insights and emotional responses, including empathy and personal reflection, as well as moments of detachment. The role-playing event was consistently described as one of the most memorable educational activities during their school years. A key implication from the evaluation and interviews is that, for role-playing to be an effective pedagogical tool in addressing sensitive topics such as xenophobia and prejudice, careful planning and structured facilitation are crucial to ensure meaningful and constructive outcomes. However, most often the literature is built up as brick stones with information and definitions of these topics. Education in the field could be enhanced by incorporating more activity-based methods, in which participants engage directly and interactively with the subject matter. Role-playing has been widely recognized as an effective method for reducing prejudice, particularly among children, though it is also applicable to adults even if previous research indicates that it has stronger effects on children and adolescents ( Tsergas et al., 2021 ). A notable example of this approach is Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes – Brown Eyes” exercise, a seminal natural experiment from the 1960s ( Aboud and Levy, 2000 ; Pedersen et al., 2005 ). In this experiment, Elliott divided a classroom into two groups: one designated as “blue eyes” and the other as “brown eyes,” irrespective of the participants’ actual eye color. One of these groups was then subjected to discriminatory treatment, for example when she told the children that brown eyes were superior to blue, it fostered a sense of superiority and led to arrogant behavior among those placed in the favored group. Much of what is known about the “Blue Eyes – Brown Eyes” experiment comes primarily from television documentaries, such as “The Eye of the Storm” by Peters (1970) . In one of the few follow-up studies, adult participants reflected positively on their experiences, considering them both meaningful and impactful ( Pedersen et al., 2005 ). Another experiment, based on the same scenario and conducted with teacher education students by Byrnes and Kiger (1990) , found that most participants viewed the experience as significant, with a moderate reduction in prejudice. However, many participants also reported experiencing stress during the simulation. Several studies involving children and adolescents have found positive, though weak, effects ( Aboud and Levy, 2000 ). A comprehensive meta-analysis including results from 26 studies on prejudice reduction by McGregor (1993) , which draws statistically generalizable conclusions revealed that role-playing significantly reduced racial prejudice. However, it was no more effective than other forms of anti-racist education. Additionally, role-playing appeared to reduce prejudice more effectively among children and adolescents compared to adult participants. There are several possible explanations for these short-lived effects. One is that participants may display reduced prejudice immediately after the event due to a desire to conform to perceived social expectations, rather than because of a genuine change in underlying beliefs. Alternatively, ongoing social pressures or exposure to prejudiced environments after the intervention may gradually erode any initial attitude change. Additionally, methodological limitations may contribute to this outcome, as controlling for external variables in real-world settings is inherently challenging, making it difficult to isolate the true effect of the intervention ( Paluck et al., 2021 ; Hsieh et al., 2022 ). A Norwegian study, involving children and adolescents examined the effects on a jigsaw cooperative learning experience rather than role-playing. This technique involves participants becoming experts on a specific portion of a topic and then teaching it to others, with the goal of fostering interdependence and cooperation. They also reinforce the potential of role-play as a method that, when carefully facilitated, can generate both immediate and enduring benefits across emotional and cognitive domains. This study was based on a small sample and focused on a single, professionally facilitated role-playing exercise. As such, the findings may not be directly generalizable to classroom-based implementations of similar activities. The long-term effects reported by participants were likely influenced by the fact that the activity took place outside the regular school environment, breaking the routine and thereby becoming more memorable than a typical classroom lesson. In the present study, these measures were excluded due to the methodological challenges associated with isolating the effects of the intervention in a quasi-experimental design. Incorporating such tools would be more feasible under controlled experimental conditions. Another limitation of this study is the lack of consideration for participants’ individual experiences with asylum seeking. Future research could address this by including questions related to both personal experiences and knowledge of the asylum-seeking process.