I have just participated in the following improv theatre exercise: each person secretly gets a random number from 1 to 10, without others knowing it. Then all the people start walking randomly and try to behave according to their number, where 1 is the lowest in social hierarchy and 10 is the highest. They try to look and look at at others in the way that would best communicate their number. After few minutes of that people are asked to self-arrange in a line from lowest to the highest number, without communicating their numbers.
That was an eye opening exercise.
Being given number 9 I could definitely see who is at my level or above it and who is below. But I was not quite able to tell between 9s and 10s.
Seeing people with numbers clearly lower than 5 made me not interested to even make eye contact with them. I even caught myself on a short thought that they are so pathetic. Made me thought about the prison experiment.
During the line arrangement phase I remembered about my severe problems with self confidence and decided to experiment a bit by looking directly in the eyes of a guy who I was not sure whether he was 9 or 10, for a prolonged time. And after a while I had it! A short glimpse of self insecurity in one of his eyes! Then I knew he was at most 9. The other 2 who I was not sure of did not even bother to look me in the eyes. Indeed, that one guy turned out to be 9, and the other two were 10s.
It matters so much how you think of yourself.
I knew it, but this exercise lets you feel it, not only know it. It's a huge difference. I should have had this exercise in kindergarten 😀 That is one of the reasons why I think that improv is great for expanding your personality, as it gives you a safe environment to experiment. Everything is allowed and making idiot of yourself is essentially the main thing that we do.
I was also shocked to discover that after the exercise finished I still felt that I am better than most of the people in the room. I had to explain to myself multiple times that "hey that was just a game and a random number each of us got".
It's great food for thought about social inequalities, and what means that some person is a better person than some other person. Such a simple game and invoked so many narcissistic feelings, and biased heavily how I viewed the other people, even long after the game was over, even though I knew that the numbers we got randomly. I bet it happens everyday with everyone. Such an important piece of practical knowledge.