November 27, 2025 • 21 mins
Sometimes science delivers groundbreaking discoveries that reshape our understanding of the universe. Other times, scientists put a guy in a Batman suit on a subway train and watch what happens. This is that second kind of science — and honestly, it might be the more important one.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Sometimes science delivers groundbreaking discoveries that reshape our understanding of
the universe. Other times, scientists put a guy in a
Batman suit on a subway train and watch what happens.
This is that second kind of science, and honestly it
might be the more important one. I'm Darren Marler, and
this is weird dark news. A team of researchers in Milan, Italy,
(00:35):
recently asked themselves a question that probably nobody else was,
asking what happens to people's behavior when Batman shows up
on public transportation. Francesco Pagnini, a psychology professor at Universita
Catalica del Sacro Coore, led this wonderfully absurd investigation. His
team wanted to know if weird, unexpected things could snap
(00:55):
people out of their daily trance long enough to be
well nice to each other. The study was published November
twenty twenty five and a legit scientific journal called NPJ
Mental Health Research, which is part of the Nature publishing family.
So yeah, this is real peer review to science. Somebody's
tax dollars probably funded Batman riding the subway. The basic
(01:18):
idea behind the experiment is pretty straightforward. Most of us
walk through life on autopilot. We commute to work, stare
at our phones, and barely register the people around us.
We're not trying to be jerks, We're just zoned out.
The researchers wanted to know if something unexpected and attention
grabbing could wake people up and make them more likely
(01:39):
to help a stranger. Their tests subject for something unexpected
a dude dressed as Batman. The research team set up
what might be the strangest commute in the Lawn subway history.
Here's how it worked. First, they ran a bunch of
normal rides. A female experimenter appearing pregnant with a prosthetic belly,
boarded the metro alongside I had a non interacting observer.
(02:01):
The pregnant woman was faking it. She had a fake
belly strapped on, but the other passengers didn't know that.
The observer's job was simple, count how many people offered
their seat to the visibly pregnant lady. This was the
control group, basically the baseline measurement of how nice people
are on a regular day when nothing weird is happening.
(02:21):
Spoiler alert, not that nice. Then came phase two, same setup,
fake pregnant woman boards the train observer watches what happens,
But this time another experimenter dressed as Batman entered the
train from a different door, approximately three meters away. That's
about ten feet for those of us who think in
(02:42):
freedom units. Batman and pregnant woman didn't interact at all.
He just stood there being Batman on the Milan Subway
like it was completely normal. The researchers wanted to see
if his mere presence, just existing in the same space
would change how people behaved toward the pregnant woman. For
ethical reasons, the full mask covering the upper face of
(03:05):
Batman was admitted to avoid potentially scarying passengers. So this
was Batman with a visible human face, cape logo, pointy ears,
just no creepy full face mask. Still obviously Batman, just
less likely to make small children cry or cause someone
to call the police. The researchers were careful about keeping
(03:26):
the experiment fair. Both conditions were conducted simultaneously to avoid
possible confounds deriving from time and location, with the two
research teams positioned in different cars of the Metro trains.
But this means in plain English, they ran the Batman
version and the normal version at the same time on
different train cars. That way, things like time of day,
(03:48):
whether or if the local soccer team won last night
couldn't mess up the results. They also had rules about
which rides counted. For an observation to be considered valid,
all seats in the wagon had to be occupied, and
no more than five people could be standing between the seats.
If there were empty seats, obviously nobody would need to
(04:08):
give one up, and if the train was so packed
that people couldn't move, they couldn't give up their seats
even if they wanted to. In total, they observed one
hundred and thirty eight rides, seventy without Batman, sixty eight
with Batman. Each observation lasted just one stop, roughly two
to four minutes, before the researchers hopped off and did
(04:28):
the whole thing again on the next train. That is
a lot of subway rides with a guy and a
Batman costume. So what happened In the control condition? The
chances that a passenger would leave their spot were thirty
seven point sixty six percent, while when Batman was there,
the chances increased to sixty seven point twenty one percent,
almost twice. Let me translate that into human terms. Without
(04:52):
Batman around, only about one in three people offered their
seat to a pregnant woman with Batman lurking ten feet away.
Two out of three people suddenly remembered their manners. Like
I said, nearly double the same pregnant woman on the
same subway line at the same time of day, But
you add one guy and a cape, and suddenly humans
(05:13):
become almost twice as decent to each other. The odds
ratio for the Batman condition was three point three nine
to three. In normal people speak, that means subway passengers
were more than three times more likely to do the
right thing when Batman was watching, not a little more likely,
not somewhat more likely, three times more likely these statistics.
(05:35):
Nerds hearing me say this will appreciate that the results
were highly significant, the kind of results that make scientists
confident this was not just random chance. This was a real,
measurable Batman effect. Most of those who offered their seats
were women in both conditions, sixty eight point two nine
percent in the Batman condition and sixty five point five
(05:55):
to one percent in the control condition. The average age
of the helpful passenger was around forty one to forty
two years old in both groups. So if you're building
a profile of who is most likely to give up
their seat for a pregnant stranger, it's a middle aged woman,
and they become significantly more likely to do so when
there's a superhero nearby. All right, so Batman makes people nicer.
(06:19):
That's interesting. But here's where the study gets genuinely strange.
After somebody offered their seat, the researchers would ask them
a few quick questions. One of those questions for the
people in the Batman group was whether they had noticed
a guy in the costume. Notably, forty four percent of
those who offered their seat in the experimental condition reported
not seeing Batman at all. Huh. Almost half the people
(06:44):
who gave up their seats claimed they had absolutely no
idea Batman was standing ten feet away from them. They
didn't see him, didn't notice him, had no conscious awareness
that there was a grown man dressed as a comic
book character in the subway car, and yet they still
gave up their seats at nearly twice the normal rate.
(07:07):
This is like finding out you're more likely to eat
healthy when there's a poster of vegetables in the room.
But only if you don't actually look at that poster.
It makes no logical sense, and yet the numbers don't lie.
When asked about the reason for their kind gesture, most
of the responses and both conditions referred to the importance
of recognizing pregnancy, with some directly referring to social norms, education,
(07:31):
or safety. People said things like she needed the seat
more than me, or it's the right thing to do.
Nobody said because Batman would have been disappointed in me otherwise,
or I felt a dark knight would judge me. Whatever
Batman was doing to these people, he was doing it
under the radar. Supposedly, his influence was working on some
(07:53):
level that people couldn't even detect in themselves, assuming they
were being honest. The researchers have some theories about one.
A guy in a bad costume makes strangers nicer to
pregnant women even when they don't consciously notice him. The
main idea is something psychologists call mindfulness, but not the
meditation app kind where you pay fourteen dollars and ninety
(08:14):
nine cents a month to hear somebody tell you to breathe.
In psychology terms, mindfulness just means being aware of what's
happening right now, in this moment, instead of being lost
in your own thoughts think about your typical commute. You're
probably thinking about work, or what you're going to eat
for dinner, or that embarrassing thing you said in two
thousand and three that still haunts you. At two am.
(08:36):
You're not really there. Your body is on the train,
but your brain is somewhere else. Entirely, you're on autopilot,
running the commute to work program while your conscious mind
wanders off. The researchers suggested that unexpected events create a
kind of involuntary mindfulness, a spontaneous, present focused awareness that
(08:57):
makes people more sensitive to other's needs. So here's how
that works in practice. You're on the subway, zoned out,
thinking about nothing in particular, Then Batman walks in, your
brain goes, wait what, and suddenly you're yanked back into
your present moment. You're actually paying attention to your surroundings
now because something weird just happened and your brain needs
(09:19):
to process it. And once you're actually paying attention, really
looking around and taking in your environment, you're way more
likely to notice the pregnant lady who could use a
seat on a normal day, she might register as just
another shape in your peripheral vision, but now you're awake,
you're present, and you see her. This is consistent with
research on something called the peak technique, where atypical or
(09:43):
unexpected stimuli disrupt automatic responses and increase compliance Salespeople have
known about this for years. If you ask somebody for
a weird specific amount of money, like can you spare
thirty seven cents? Instead of got any change, they're more
likely to say yes. The unusual request makes their brain
stop and think instead of automatically saying no. Batman works
(10:06):
the same way. He's so unexpected that he short circuits
your autopilot mode, and once you're actually thinking, you're more
likely to do the right thing. The mindfulness explanation makes sense,
but it's not the only possibility. The researchers also suggest
that the superhero figure may have increased the salience of
cultural values, gender roles, and chivalrous helping norms. In simpler terms,
(10:31):
Batman reminds us to be heroes ourselves. Think about what
Batman represents. He's a guy who sees somebody in trouble
and helps them. That's literally his whole deal. He doesn't
have superpowers like Superman. He's just a dude who decides
to spend his time and money making his city safer.
He is the ultimate helper. So when you see Batman,
(10:52):
even a fake one on a subway, some part of
your brain might think, all right, yeah, helping people, that's
the thing we're supposed to do, right, Like seeing a
please recycle sign makes you slightly more likely to put
your can in the correct bin, even if you were
not consciously reading the sign. Previous research backs this up.
A twenty eighteen study found that individuals primed with superhero
(11:14):
images reported greater helping intentions relative to a control group.
In that experiment, people who were shown pictures with Superman
or Spider Man in the background, just subtle images, nothing obvious,
were more likely to say that they would help others
and actually did help when given the opportunity. In one
version of that study, participants exposed to a superhero poster
(11:36):
helped an experimenter with a tedious task more than those
exposed to a bicycle poster. Same boring task, same experimenter
asking for help, but the people who glanced at Superman
on the wall were more willing to pitch in the
theory is that superheroes represent part of an individual's ideal self.
Deep down, most of us want to be good people.
(11:59):
We want to be the kind a person who helps others.
Superheroes are that ideal cranked up to eleven. They are
what we might be if we had no fear, unlimited resources,
and well really cool customs. When being reminded of a superhero,
individuals can protect their self esteem by recalling that such
individuals are not real. Thus they pose little psychological threat
(12:21):
and are instead inspirational, motivating them to emulate their noble actions.
You can't actually be Batman. He's fictional, and you probably
don't have a billion dollars or a secret cave. But
you can give up your subway seat. That's achievable. That's
a tiny, real worldway to be heroic. So maybe Batman
(12:41):
doesn't just wake people up. Maybe he also reminds them
who they want to be. Here's the thing that still
doesn't quite add up, though. If Batman works by reminding
us to be heroic, that implies we need to actually
notice him. You can't be inspired by something you don't see.
But remember, forty four percent of the people who offered
(13:02):
their seats claimed they didn't see Batman. Since many helpers
didn't consciously register Batman, it's unlikely that symbolic heroism alone
drove their actions. If nearly half the people didn't even
know he was there, how could his symbolic meaning affect them.
(13:22):
The researchers have a fascinating theory about this. They suggest
that the disruptive effect can operate at an inner personal level.
Shifts in attention or pro social cues triggered in some
individuals may spread socially within the group, influencing behavior even
among those not directly aware of the initial disruption. Let
(13:44):
me unpack that. It's actually kind of cool. Imagine you're
in a subway car. Batman walks in. Half the people
in the car notice him and perk up. They are
suddenly more alert, more aware of their surroundings. Of course
they are, they just met Batman. They start looking around,
maybe making eye contact with other passengers, may be shifting
in their seats. You are one of the people who
(14:05):
did not notice Batman directly, but you do notice on
some subconscious level that something has changed in the car.
Other people seem more alert. There's a different energy in
the space. You don't know why, but something feels different,
and that subtle shift in the atmosphere is enough to
wake you up a little bit too. The alertness spreads
(14:26):
from person to person like a yawn or a smile.
By the time the pregnant woman needs a seat, the
whole car is slightly more aware, slightly more present, even
the people who have no idea why. It's like secondhand mindfulness.
Batman makes some people pay attention, and those people make
other people pay attention, and pretty soon everybody is a
(14:46):
little bit more likely to notice someone and needs help.
No good science article would be complete without acknowledging what
we don't know and what might be wrong with the study.
While the researchers themselves acknowledged that close replicationtions of social
priming effects have largely failed to reproduce original findings. Social
priming is the idea that subtle cues can influence our
(15:09):
behavior without our awareness, and it's set our rough time.
In recent years, a lot of famous psychology studies about
priming turned out to be unreliable when other scientists tried
to repeat them. So while the Batman study shows a
clear effect, we should be a little cautious about the
explanation for it. Maybe its mindfulness, Maybe it's heroic inspiration.
(15:30):
Maybe it's something else entirely that nobody's thought of yet.
The study was also limited to a specific public transportation system,
and cultural factors may influence how the results apply elsewhere.
Italians might respond differently to unexpected costumed characters than Americans
or Japanese commuters would. Maybe there's something specific about Milan
(15:52):
subway culture that made this work. We don't know until
somebody repeats the experiment in other cities. It also remains
clear whether the observed effect is unique to Batman or
would emerge with other unexpected figures. Would a guy dressed
as Superman get the same results? What about the Joker?
Would a villain make people less helpful? What if somebody
(16:14):
showed up dressed as a giant hot dog. The study
used Batman specifically, so we don't know how much of
the effect is about unexpected things in general versus superheroes
specifically versus Batman in particular. The demographic data the age
and gender of the passengers was estimated by observers rather
(16:35):
than directly measured, which could also introduce some error. The
researchers did their best but they were eyeballing ages from
across a subway car, not checking IDs. Future research should
test a range of characters or disruptions, varying in both
emotional tone and symbolic meaning to clarify exactly what's causing
this effect. In other words, more cosplay based science is needed.
(16:59):
Somebody's going to have to up as various characters and
ride public transit for science. Worst job ever, best job ever?
Hard to say, I guess it depends on your opinion
of wearing spandex setting. Aside all the caveats, the core
finding is pretty exciting. Unexpected, non threatening weirdness seems to
make people nicer to each other. The researchers suggest that
(17:20):
if unexpected yet non threatening events can increase mindfulness and
pro social behavior, urban planners, policymakers, and psychologists might consider
ways to integrate positive disruptions into daily life. The findings
could inform strategies to promote altruistic behaviors in daily life,
from public art installations to innovative social campaigns. Think about
(17:43):
what that might look like. Cities could install surprising public
art that makes people stop and look. Flash mobs could
appear in train stations unexpected performances could pop up in
public spaces. Anything that makes people go huh, that's different
might have the same side effect of making them more
aware of the humans around them. We already do this
(18:06):
sort of street performers, public murals, weird architecture. These things
all serve to break up the monotony of daily life.
The Batman study suggests they might be doing more than
just entertaining us. They might be making us better neighbors,
even if we don't realize it. Of course, there are limits.
You probably can't just hire a bunch of batmen to
(18:26):
patrol public transit. Although that would be cool, the novelty
would wear off eventually. Once you've seen your fifteenth Batman
this week, it probably stops being surprising, And there are
probably liability issues with having vigilante cos players as city employees.
Not to mention copyright laws, I'm sure somebody from DC
or Warner Brothers at Suya. But the principle that breaking
(18:47):
routine can promote kindness that could still be applied in
lots of creative ways. There's something weirdly hopeful buried in
these findings. We spend a lot of time worrying about
how disconnected and self absorbed. Modern life has made us.
We're all staring at our phones, lost in our own
little worlds, barely acknowledging each other's existence. It can feel
(19:08):
like we have forgotten how to be a community, how
to be human. But this study suggests we haven't actually
lost the capacity for kindness. It's still there. We've just
gotten really good at tuning out our surroundings. We're not
bad people, we're just distracted people, and distracted people can
be woken up. The study concludes that unexpected events can
(19:30):
increase pro social behavior by momentarily disrupting automatic attention patterns
and fostering situational awareness. The pregnant woman in this study
got a seat about thirty eight percent of the time
under normal conditions. That's not great, but it's not nothing
more than a third of people. We're paying enough attention
to help without Batman's intervention. Add in a little surprise,
(19:53):
a little disruption to the daily routine, and that number
jumps to sixty seven percent. We're not hopeless. We just
need occasional reminders to look up from our phones and
see each other. Maybe the real Batman effect isn't about
capes or cowls. It's about anything strange enough to make
us present in our own lives again, even for just
(20:14):
a moment. A weird piece of art, an unexpected kindness
from a stranger, a friend who says something that makes
you actually think instead of just responding on autopilot. We
all have the power to be those disruptions for each other.
We can be the Batman. Not the punching criminals Batman.
Obviously that's illegal and also you'd probably hurt your hand,
(20:37):
but the making people pay attention Batman, the reminding people
to be decent Batman cape and cowl optional. If you'd
like to read the story for yourself or share the
article with a friend, you can read it on the
Weird Darkness website. I've placed a link to it in
the episode description, and you can find more stories of
the paranormal, true crime, strange and more. Include a numerous
(20:59):
story uce that never make it to the podcast in
my Weird Darknews blog at Weird Darkness dot com slash
news
Sometimes science delivers groundbreaking discoveries that reshape our understanding of
the universe. Other times, scientists put a guy in a
Batman suit on a subway train and watch what happens.
This is that second kind of science, and honestly it
might be the more important one. I'm Darren Marler, and
this is weird dark news. A team of researchers in Milan, Italy,
(00:35):
recently asked themselves a question that probably nobody else was,
asking what happens to people's behavior when Batman shows up
on public transportation. Francesco Pagnini, a psychology professor at Universita
Catalica del Sacro Coore, led this wonderfully absurd investigation. His
team wanted to know if weird, unexpected things could snap
(00:55):
people out of their daily trance long enough to be
well nice to each other. The study was published November
twenty twenty five and a legit scientific journal called NPJ
Mental Health Research, which is part of the Nature publishing family.
So yeah, this is real peer review to science. Somebody's
tax dollars probably funded Batman riding the subway. The basic
(01:18):
idea behind the experiment is pretty straightforward. Most of us
walk through life on autopilot. We commute to work, stare
at our phones, and barely register the people around us.
We're not trying to be jerks, We're just zoned out.
The researchers wanted to know if something unexpected and attention
grabbing could wake people up and make them more likely
(01:39):
to help a stranger. Their tests subject for something unexpected
a dude dressed as Batman. The research team set up
what might be the strangest commute in the Lawn subway history.
Here's how it worked. First, they ran a bunch of
normal rides. A female experimenter appearing pregnant with a prosthetic belly,
boarded the metro alongside I had a non interacting observer.
(02:01):
The pregnant woman was faking it. She had a fake
belly strapped on, but the other passengers didn't know that.
The observer's job was simple, count how many people offered
their seat to the visibly pregnant lady. This was the
control group, basically the baseline measurement of how nice people
are on a regular day when nothing weird is happening.
(02:21):
Spoiler alert, not that nice. Then came phase two, same setup,
fake pregnant woman boards the train observer watches what happens,
But this time another experimenter dressed as Batman entered the
train from a different door, approximately three meters away. That's
about ten feet for those of us who think in
(02:42):
freedom units. Batman and pregnant woman didn't interact at all.
He just stood there being Batman on the Milan Subway
like it was completely normal. The researchers wanted to see
if his mere presence, just existing in the same space
would change how people behaved toward the pregnant woman. For
ethical reasons, the full mask covering the upper face of
(03:05):
Batman was admitted to avoid potentially scarying passengers. So this
was Batman with a visible human face, cape logo, pointy ears,
just no creepy full face mask. Still obviously Batman, just
less likely to make small children cry or cause someone
to call the police. The researchers were careful about keeping
(03:26):
the experiment fair. Both conditions were conducted simultaneously to avoid
possible confounds deriving from time and location, with the two
research teams positioned in different cars of the Metro trains.
But this means in plain English, they ran the Batman
version and the normal version at the same time on
different train cars. That way, things like time of day,
(03:48):
whether or if the local soccer team won last night
couldn't mess up the results. They also had rules about
which rides counted. For an observation to be considered valid,
all seats in the wagon had to be occupied, and
no more than five people could be standing between the seats.
If there were empty seats, obviously nobody would need to
(04:08):
give one up, and if the train was so packed
that people couldn't move, they couldn't give up their seats
even if they wanted to. In total, they observed one
hundred and thirty eight rides, seventy without Batman, sixty eight
with Batman. Each observation lasted just one stop, roughly two
to four minutes, before the researchers hopped off and did
(04:28):
the whole thing again on the next train. That is
a lot of subway rides with a guy and a
Batman costume. So what happened In the control condition? The
chances that a passenger would leave their spot were thirty
seven point sixty six percent, while when Batman was there,
the chances increased to sixty seven point twenty one percent,
almost twice. Let me translate that into human terms. Without
(04:52):
Batman around, only about one in three people offered their
seat to a pregnant woman with Batman lurking ten feet away.
Two out of three people suddenly remembered their manners. Like
I said, nearly double the same pregnant woman on the
same subway line at the same time of day, But
you add one guy and a cape, and suddenly humans
(05:13):
become almost twice as decent to each other. The odds
ratio for the Batman condition was three point three nine
to three. In normal people speak, that means subway passengers
were more than three times more likely to do the
right thing when Batman was watching, not a little more likely,
not somewhat more likely, three times more likely these statistics.
(05:35):
Nerds hearing me say this will appreciate that the results
were highly significant, the kind of results that make scientists
confident this was not just random chance. This was a real,
measurable Batman effect. Most of those who offered their seats
were women in both conditions, sixty eight point two nine
percent in the Batman condition and sixty five point five
(05:55):
to one percent in the control condition. The average age
of the helpful passenger was around forty one to forty
two years old in both groups. So if you're building
a profile of who is most likely to give up
their seat for a pregnant stranger, it's a middle aged woman,
and they become significantly more likely to do so when
there's a superhero nearby. All right, so Batman makes people nicer.
(06:19):
That's interesting. But here's where the study gets genuinely strange.
After somebody offered their seat, the researchers would ask them
a few quick questions. One of those questions for the
people in the Batman group was whether they had noticed
a guy in the costume. Notably, forty four percent of
those who offered their seat in the experimental condition reported
not seeing Batman at all. Huh. Almost half the people
(06:44):
who gave up their seats claimed they had absolutely no
idea Batman was standing ten feet away from them. They
didn't see him, didn't notice him, had no conscious awareness
that there was a grown man dressed as a comic
book character in the subway car, and yet they still
gave up their seats at nearly twice the normal rate.
(07:07):
This is like finding out you're more likely to eat
healthy when there's a poster of vegetables in the room.
But only if you don't actually look at that poster.
It makes no logical sense, and yet the numbers don't lie.
When asked about the reason for their kind gesture, most
of the responses and both conditions referred to the importance
of recognizing pregnancy, with some directly referring to social norms, education,
(07:31):
or safety. People said things like she needed the seat
more than me, or it's the right thing to do.
Nobody said because Batman would have been disappointed in me otherwise,
or I felt a dark knight would judge me. Whatever
Batman was doing to these people, he was doing it
under the radar. Supposedly, his influence was working on some
(07:53):
level that people couldn't even detect in themselves, assuming they
were being honest. The researchers have some theories about one.
A guy in a bad costume makes strangers nicer to
pregnant women even when they don't consciously notice him. The
main idea is something psychologists call mindfulness, but not the
meditation app kind where you pay fourteen dollars and ninety
(08:14):
nine cents a month to hear somebody tell you to breathe.
In psychology terms, mindfulness just means being aware of what's
happening right now, in this moment, instead of being lost
in your own thoughts think about your typical commute. You're
probably thinking about work, or what you're going to eat
for dinner, or that embarrassing thing you said in two
thousand and three that still haunts you. At two am.
(08:36):
You're not really there. Your body is on the train,
but your brain is somewhere else. Entirely, you're on autopilot,
running the commute to work program while your conscious mind
wanders off. The researchers suggested that unexpected events create a
kind of involuntary mindfulness, a spontaneous, present focused awareness that
(08:57):
makes people more sensitive to other's needs. So here's how
that works in practice. You're on the subway, zoned out,
thinking about nothing in particular, Then Batman walks in, your
brain goes, wait what, and suddenly you're yanked back into
your present moment. You're actually paying attention to your surroundings
now because something weird just happened and your brain needs
(09:19):
to process it. And once you're actually paying attention, really
looking around and taking in your environment, you're way more
likely to notice the pregnant lady who could use a
seat on a normal day, she might register as just
another shape in your peripheral vision, but now you're awake,
you're present, and you see her. This is consistent with
research on something called the peak technique, where atypical or
(09:43):
unexpected stimuli disrupt automatic responses and increase compliance Salespeople have
known about this for years. If you ask somebody for
a weird specific amount of money, like can you spare
thirty seven cents? Instead of got any change, they're more
likely to say yes. The unusual request makes their brain
stop and think instead of automatically saying no. Batman works
(10:06):
the same way. He's so unexpected that he short circuits
your autopilot mode, and once you're actually thinking, you're more
likely to do the right thing. The mindfulness explanation makes sense,
but it's not the only possibility. The researchers also suggest
that the superhero figure may have increased the salience of
cultural values, gender roles, and chivalrous helping norms. In simpler terms,
(10:31):
Batman reminds us to be heroes ourselves. Think about what
Batman represents. He's a guy who sees somebody in trouble
and helps them. That's literally his whole deal. He doesn't
have superpowers like Superman. He's just a dude who decides
to spend his time and money making his city safer.
He is the ultimate helper. So when you see Batman,
(10:52):
even a fake one on a subway, some part of
your brain might think, all right, yeah, helping people, that's
the thing we're supposed to do, right, Like seeing a
please recycle sign makes you slightly more likely to put
your can in the correct bin, even if you were
not consciously reading the sign. Previous research backs this up.
A twenty eighteen study found that individuals primed with superhero
(11:14):
images reported greater helping intentions relative to a control group.
In that experiment, people who were shown pictures with Superman
or Spider Man in the background, just subtle images, nothing obvious,
were more likely to say that they would help others
and actually did help when given the opportunity. In one
version of that study, participants exposed to a superhero poster
(11:36):
helped an experimenter with a tedious task more than those
exposed to a bicycle poster. Same boring task, same experimenter
asking for help, but the people who glanced at Superman
on the wall were more willing to pitch in the
theory is that superheroes represent part of an individual's ideal self.
Deep down, most of us want to be good people.
(11:59):
We want to be the kind a person who helps others.
Superheroes are that ideal cranked up to eleven. They are
what we might be if we had no fear, unlimited resources,
and well really cool customs. When being reminded of a superhero,
individuals can protect their self esteem by recalling that such
individuals are not real. Thus they pose little psychological threat
(12:21):
and are instead inspirational, motivating them to emulate their noble actions.
You can't actually be Batman. He's fictional, and you probably
don't have a billion dollars or a secret cave. But
you can give up your subway seat. That's achievable. That's
a tiny, real worldway to be heroic. So maybe Batman
(12:41):
doesn't just wake people up. Maybe he also reminds them
who they want to be. Here's the thing that still
doesn't quite add up, though. If Batman works by reminding
us to be heroic, that implies we need to actually
notice him. You can't be inspired by something you don't see.
But remember, forty four percent of the people who offered
(13:02):
their seats claimed they didn't see Batman. Since many helpers
didn't consciously register Batman, it's unlikely that symbolic heroism alone
drove their actions. If nearly half the people didn't even
know he was there, how could his symbolic meaning affect them.
(13:22):
The researchers have a fascinating theory about this. They suggest
that the disruptive effect can operate at an inner personal level.
Shifts in attention or pro social cues triggered in some
individuals may spread socially within the group, influencing behavior even
among those not directly aware of the initial disruption. Let
(13:44):
me unpack that. It's actually kind of cool. Imagine you're
in a subway car. Batman walks in. Half the people
in the car notice him and perk up. They are
suddenly more alert, more aware of their surroundings. Of course
they are, they just met Batman. They start looking around,
maybe making eye contact with other passengers, may be shifting
in their seats. You are one of the people who
(14:05):
did not notice Batman directly, but you do notice on
some subconscious level that something has changed in the car.
Other people seem more alert. There's a different energy in
the space. You don't know why, but something feels different,
and that subtle shift in the atmosphere is enough to
wake you up a little bit too. The alertness spreads
(14:26):
from person to person like a yawn or a smile.
By the time the pregnant woman needs a seat, the
whole car is slightly more aware, slightly more present, even
the people who have no idea why. It's like secondhand mindfulness.
Batman makes some people pay attention, and those people make
other people pay attention, and pretty soon everybody is a
(14:46):
little bit more likely to notice someone and needs help.
No good science article would be complete without acknowledging what
we don't know and what might be wrong with the study.
While the researchers themselves acknowledged that close replicationtions of social
priming effects have largely failed to reproduce original findings. Social
priming is the idea that subtle cues can influence our
(15:09):
behavior without our awareness, and it's set our rough time.
In recent years, a lot of famous psychology studies about
priming turned out to be unreliable when other scientists tried
to repeat them. So while the Batman study shows a
clear effect, we should be a little cautious about the
explanation for it. Maybe its mindfulness, Maybe it's heroic inspiration.
(15:30):
Maybe it's something else entirely that nobody's thought of yet.
The study was also limited to a specific public transportation system,
and cultural factors may influence how the results apply elsewhere.
Italians might respond differently to unexpected costumed characters than Americans
or Japanese commuters would. Maybe there's something specific about Milan
(15:52):
subway culture that made this work. We don't know until
somebody repeats the experiment in other cities. It also remains
clear whether the observed effect is unique to Batman or
would emerge with other unexpected figures. Would a guy dressed
as Superman get the same results? What about the Joker?
Would a villain make people less helpful? What if somebody
(16:14):
showed up dressed as a giant hot dog. The study
used Batman specifically, so we don't know how much of
the effect is about unexpected things in general versus superheroes
specifically versus Batman in particular. The demographic data the age
and gender of the passengers was estimated by observers rather
(16:35):
than directly measured, which could also introduce some error. The
researchers did their best but they were eyeballing ages from
across a subway car, not checking IDs. Future research should
test a range of characters or disruptions, varying in both
emotional tone and symbolic meaning to clarify exactly what's causing
this effect. In other words, more cosplay based science is needed.
(16:59):
Somebody's going to have to up as various characters and
ride public transit for science. Worst job ever, best job ever?
Hard to say, I guess it depends on your opinion
of wearing spandex setting. Aside all the caveats, the core
finding is pretty exciting. Unexpected, non threatening weirdness seems to
make people nicer to each other. The researchers suggest that
(17:20):
if unexpected yet non threatening events can increase mindfulness and
pro social behavior, urban planners, policymakers, and psychologists might consider
ways to integrate positive disruptions into daily life. The findings
could inform strategies to promote altruistic behaviors in daily life,
from public art installations to innovative social campaigns. Think about
(17:43):
what that might look like. Cities could install surprising public
art that makes people stop and look. Flash mobs could
appear in train stations unexpected performances could pop up in
public spaces. Anything that makes people go huh, that's different
might have the same side effect of making them more
aware of the humans around them. We already do this
(18:06):
sort of street performers, public murals, weird architecture. These things
all serve to break up the monotony of daily life.
The Batman study suggests they might be doing more than
just entertaining us. They might be making us better neighbors,
even if we don't realize it. Of course, there are limits.
You probably can't just hire a bunch of batmen to
(18:26):
patrol public transit. Although that would be cool, the novelty
would wear off eventually. Once you've seen your fifteenth Batman
this week, it probably stops being surprising, And there are
probably liability issues with having vigilante cos players as city employees.
Not to mention copyright laws, I'm sure somebody from DC
or Warner Brothers at Suya. But the principle that breaking
(18:47):
routine can promote kindness that could still be applied in
lots of creative ways. There's something weirdly hopeful buried in
these findings. We spend a lot of time worrying about
how disconnected and self absorbed. Modern life has made us.
We're all staring at our phones, lost in our own
little worlds, barely acknowledging each other's existence. It can feel
(19:08):
like we have forgotten how to be a community, how
to be human. But this study suggests we haven't actually
lost the capacity for kindness. It's still there. We've just
gotten really good at tuning out our surroundings. We're not
bad people, we're just distracted people, and distracted people can
be woken up. The study concludes that unexpected events can
(19:30):
increase pro social behavior by momentarily disrupting automatic attention patterns
and fostering situational awareness. The pregnant woman in this study
got a seat about thirty eight percent of the time
under normal conditions. That's not great, but it's not nothing
more than a third of people. We're paying enough attention
to help without Batman's intervention. Add in a little surprise,
(19:53):
a little disruption to the daily routine, and that number
jumps to sixty seven percent. We're not hopeless. We just
need occasional reminders to look up from our phones and
see each other. Maybe the real Batman effect isn't about
capes or cowls. It's about anything strange enough to make
us present in our own lives again, even for just
(20:14):
a moment. A weird piece of art, an unexpected kindness
from a stranger, a friend who says something that makes
you actually think instead of just responding on autopilot. We
all have the power to be those disruptions for each other.
We can be the Batman. Not the punching criminals Batman.
Obviously that's illegal and also you'd probably hurt your hand,
(20:37):
but the making people pay attention Batman, the reminding people
to be decent Batman cape and cowl optional. If you'd
like to read the story for yourself or share the
article with a friend, you can read it on the
Weird Darkness website. I've placed a link to it in
the episode description, and you can find more stories of
the paranormal, true crime, strange and more. Include a numerous
(20:59):
story uce that never make it to the podcast in
my Weird Darknews blog at Weird Darkness dot com slash
news
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