CEDE Seminar - Nava Ashraf

This paper evaluates a scalable psychosocial intervention designed to improve economic outcomes among individuals exposed to trauma and displacement. Guided Mental Experiencing (GME) is a group-based program that trains participants to construct vivid, emotionally coherent simulations of future scenarios. Motivated by a conceptual framework linking trauma to impairments in episodic future simulation, we test GME in two randomized controlled trials. In Ethiopia, where GME was delivered to newly arrived refugees, it increased employment, hours worked, and well-being. In Colombia, where GME was embedded in business training, it mitigated the negative earnings effects observed under training alone. Effects are largest among individuals with high trauma exposure. These results suggest that trauma can impair forward-looking cognition in ways that depress economic engagement, and that repairing this capacity can improve program effectiveness. Simulation-based interventions may thus complement standard approaches to poverty alleviation, particularly in settings where opportunity alone is insufficient to motivate action.