It's the cutest thing--when kids think about themselves as Batman, according to headlines, they can persist longer at difficult tasks and show more self-control. Many writers--even the original researchers--refer to this as "The Batman Effect". Journalists have written headlines like "Pretending to be Batman helps kids stay on task" or even "Need your child to complete a boring task? The Batman effect may help". There's a great video of some of the research here.
How do we know that dressing up as Batman works? Let's learn more about the study behind the catchy headline. I'll be quoting from this British Psychological Society summary of it, as well as from the original journal article in the scientific journal Child Development (paywall--only available through University libraries).
The study was conducted to test a theory about self-regulation. All of us--children or adults--have to exercise self-control to make ourselves stick to important (but sometimes boring) tasks. One strategy researchers are examining is "self-distancing," in which people view a situation from a third-person perspective--one more distant and objective--rather than a self-immersed perspective, which can be more emotional and impulsive. The research tests the hypothesis that seeing oneself as "Batman" will engage kids in this self-distanced perspective.
Now for the design of the study. The team of scientists...
recruited 180 kids aged 4 to 6 years and ...asked them to complete a boring, slow but supposedly important ten-minute computer task that involved pressing the space bar whenever they saw a picture of cheese or not pressing anything when the screen showed a cat. The children were encouraged to stay on task, but they were told they could take a break whenever they wanted and go play a game on a nearby iPad.
Some of the children were assigned to a “self-immersed condition”, akin to a control group, and before and during the task were told to reflect on how they were doing, asking themselves “Am I working hard?”. Other children were asked to reflect from a third-person perspective, asking themselves “Is James [insert child’s actual name] working hard?” Finally, the rest of the kids were in the Batman condition, in which they were asked to imagine they were either Batman, Bob The Builder, Rapunzel or Dora the Explorer and to ask themselves “Is Batman [or whichever character they were] working hard?”. Children in this last condition were given a relevant prop to help, such as Batman’s cape.
Here are the results (I've focused on the 4-year olds here):
...those in the Batman condition spent the most time on task (...about 32 per cent...). The children in the self-immersed condition spent the least time on task (...just over 20 per cent...) and those in the third-person condition performed in between.
a) In this study, what is the independent variable? How many levels were in this IV, and what were the levels? Was the IV independent groups or within groups?
b) What was the dependent variable?
c) Sketch a well-labeled line or bar graph of the results.
d) Why do you think the researchers included the condition in which kids were asked to think about themselves in the third person?
e) Notice that almost all of the headlines and twitter comments about this study have focused on Batman. Even the researchers call it "The Batman Effect" Is that accurate?
f) Finally, think about the fact that in the Batman condition, kids not only got to pretend to be a character. They also got to make an important choice about their participation in the study (the choice among the four different options of Batman, Rapunzel, Bob the Builder, and Dora). The kids in the self-immersed and third-person conditions did not make any choices. What kind of problem might this be in the study? (Which one of the four big validities does it address?)
g) Can the study really support the claim that "Pretending to be Batman helps kids stay on task"? Apply the three causal criteria, paying special attention to the point raised in question f), above.
Note to Instructors: If you include the results for the 6 year olds, you can also teach this as an 2x3 IVxPV design, using age (4 vs. 6 year olds) as the participant variable. Here are the full results:
The six-year-olds spent more time on task than the four-year-olds (half the time versus about a quarter of the time). No surprise there. But across age groups, and apparently unrelated to their personal scores on mental control, memory, or empathy, those in the Batman condition spent the most time on task (about 55 per cent for the six-year-olds; about 32 per cent for the four-year-olds). The children in the self-immersed condition spent the least time on task (about 35 per cent of the time for the six-year-olds; just over 20 per cent for the four-year-olds) and those in the third-person condition performed in between.
Photo credit: Weestock Images / Alamy Stock Photo
