Study Finds Batman Is Weirdly Good at Making People Polite
Seeing Batman in real-life situations may make us nicer people.
Holy altruism, Batman! A new study suggests that when someone dressed as the Dark Knight enters the monotony of our day-to-day lives, we start acting better toward the people around us.
Researchers in Milan recently conducted an experiment on the city’s subway, tracking 138 rides. In a control scenario, a visibly pregnant woman boarded a busy carriage with an observer, and the team noted whether passengers offered her a seat. They then performed the same scenario with a superhero twist, adding a man dressed as Batman who entered from another door. The difference was dramatic: when Batman was present, about 67.21% of passengers offered a seat, but without him, only around 37.66% did.
Interestingly, nearly half (44%) of the people who gave up their seat in the Batman scenario later said they hadn’t even noticed he was there. This adds a neat twist to the study by hinting that a boost in kindness doesn’t necessarily depend on any conscious awareness of Batman. Just a brief disruption to routine seems to be enough to alter some people’s behaviour.
The researchers behind the study, led by Francesco Pagnini of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, propose that the “Batman effect” takes hold because unexpected events interrupt people’s autopilot state, drawing attention to the present moment and heightening sensitivity to social cues. This appears to track with separate findings in mindfulness research, where increased awareness of the present moment often creates greater compassion and prosocial behavior.
These findings are still thought to have real-world applications, though. Even small interventions or unexpected cues that break up our daily monotony may help encourage more kindness and cooperation in public spaces. People might start being kinder, even if they don’t know why.
And hey, though it doesn’t seem to matter if Batman specifically rouses people out of their autopilot funk, we’d rather like to see what happens to the numbers when you stick Homelander in there instead.
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Kirsten Howard has paid their dues. Yes sir, the check is in the mail.