Pretending To Be Batman Helps Kids Focus

The Batman Effect, as researchers have dubbed it, allows kids to separate themselves from temptation and stay on task. Learn more on BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain
stuff is Christian saga here pretending is fun. Take the
simple task of making breakfast. Would you rather make scrambled
eggs while pondering your utility payments? Or say, pretend you're
a short order cook tasked with making the world's best
scrambled eggs for a celebrity breakfast is a lot more

(00:25):
interesting when there's something at stake. According to a recent
study in the journal Child Development, kids are savvy to
this trick. Self distancing is when we view personal experiences
from an outsider's perspective. Aiming to test the benefits of
this on children's perseverance, the researchers asked one hundred and

(00:45):
eighty kids ages four or six to do a pretty
boring computer task for ten minutes. Although all the kids
had to do was press a key when they saw
a certain image, they were told the task was important
and that they had to be good helpers. They could
take breaks to play a game on an iPad if

(01:06):
they wanted. The researchers split the kids into three groups
and asked each to think about its performance on the
given task from a certain perspective self immersed third person
or exemplar? Kids in the self immersed group asked themselves,
am I working hard? The third person group reflected on

(01:26):
the task by asking, is Christian Sager working hard? Now?
That's just me doing the third person there and the
exemplar group, those children imagined they were either Batman, Bob
the Builder, Rapunzel, or Dora the Explorer, well known characters
who are model hard workers, and were given props to

(01:46):
help them get in character. They were told to ask themselves,
for example, is Batman working hard? Every minute of the task.
A recorded voice prompted the children with their allotted question.
The researchers found at the kids in both age groups
who imagined themselves as a character spent a longer time
on the task, although predictably the younger kids spent less

(02:09):
time on the task than the older kids across the board.
The six year olds who were asked to reflect in
person spent about thirty five percent of the time on
the task rather than on break in the four year
olds just over, but the children pretending to be fictional
heroes spent fifty five percent of their time working, while

(02:31):
the four year olds in this group spent thirty two
percent of their time on task. The researchers posit that
when the children used third person or impersonated characters, the
kids distanced themselves from the boring task and tempting game,
allowing them to gain more focus and self control. Taking

(02:52):
an outsider's perspective on one's own behavior can improve perseverance
in the face of entertaining distraction. This is what the
researchers say in their study, but interpreting these results is
not so simple. Is pretending to be a character just fun?
Does it make kids think like they're powerful alter egos?

(03:13):
The study authors say, Answering these questions will require more research. Regardless,
the current study suggests that for kids, sticking to a
task might be easier with role play. Now, if you'll
excuse me, I've got to go change outfits because I
am vengeance. I am the Night. Today's episode was written

(03:40):
by Kate Kirshner, produced by Tristan McNeil and For more
on this and other topics, please visit us at how
stuff works dot com.