Behaviour Around Batman

 An interesting article about a psychological study conducted in Spain caught my eye last week:

The Batman Effect

Prosocial behavior, or the act of helping others, is essential to social life, yet the spontaneous environmental factors that trigger such behavior remain little explored. This study tested the ability of an unexpected event, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, to increase prosocial behavior by interrupting routines and increasing people's attention to the present moment.

"We conducted an experimental field study on the Milan subway," Professor Pagnini explains, "observing the behavior of 138 passengers. In the first part of our test (control condition), an experimenter, apparently pregnant, boarded the train with an observer." The experts assessed the passengers' tendency to give up their seats for the pregnant woman.

In the experimental condition, another experimenter dressed as Batman entered the scene from another door of the train. Faced with this unexpected encounter, passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seats: 67.21% of passengers offered their seats in the presence of Batman, or more than two out of three, compared to 37.66% in the control experiment, or just over one out of three.

Furthermore, the professor notes, 44% of those who offered their seats in the experimental condition reported not having seen Batman. These results suggest that unexpected events can promote prosociality, even in the absence of awareness, with implications for encouraging kindness in public settings.

The presence of a person dressed like Batman on a train made people almost twice as likely to give up their seats for a pregnant lady! The inference drawn by the researchers is that the appearance of something out of the ordinary can rouse us from our routine behaviours and produce different outcomes as a result. Makes sense, but their choice of stimulus gave me a bit of pause.

"Finally, it is also possible that the superhero figure enhanced the relevance of cultural values, gender roles, and norms of chivalrous help, consistent with research on the 'priming' effect associated with superheroes: the figure of Batman," he concludes, "could therefore play a prosocial priming role."

Well, certainly - and as one of the oldest and most well-known of costumed adventurers, Batman would seem a good choice (even if 44% of seat offerers said they didn't know he was there!), but there is no way to differentiate between those who did notice and subsequently offered up a seat did so out of a sense of altruism, or a desire (conscious or unconscious) to impress Batman, or if they acted out of a sense of intimidation or fear! Dude is a vigilante, after all; influencing behavious by threat or application of actual physical violence is kind of his breand-and-butter.

Batman has been portrayed in a lot of different ways duriung his 80+ years in the public eye, but I think it is safe to say he ranks among the top percentile of intimidation amongst characters appearing on lunchboxes and backpacks. I wonder how this might colour the results, and how different they might have been with a different hero in the scenario.

In terms of my own reflection though, I would far rather risk having the living crap kicked out of me by a psychologically unbalanced martial artist as opposed to having Superman look at me in a disaproving manner while shaking his head. Brr!

I am willing to wager a small sum that replacing Batman with Superman would result in even more altruistic behaviour due to 'big blue boy scout' emulation factors. But what about other comic book characters?

• Iron Man: 15% chance of the seat offerer flirting with the pregnant lady
• Spider-Man: 25% chance of making a joke about the transit authority, 10% chance of asking awkward questions about the pregnancy
• The Flash: 10% chance of deboarding the train and trying to beat it to the next station
• Punisher: 45% chance of glaring angrily at others who remained seated
• The Hulk: 15% chance of talking directly to the unborn child
• Captain America: 55% chance of at least three people giving up their seats, who then remain standing until they disembark at the next, regardless if it is theirs or not
• Daredevil: 20% chance of standing up in a way that not only assures the pregnant lady will get it, but will deny even seeing her if asked
• Doctor Strange: 15% chance of directing the lady to the seat with a complex hand flourish

It is funny to think that in 1954, Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent convinced many people that comic books were harmful and a cause of juvenile delinquency, causing such a backlash that for years, people in the comics industry would rather say they worked in pornography. Tehre has been a dogpile of debunking since that time though, and perhaps this article could take its place among them.

At any rate, it was surprising to see one of my lifelong favourite characters featured in such an intriguing study, especially with such positive societal outcomes!