Subway experiment reveals that having Batman nearby makes people kinder

A strange study has found that being around

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-025-00171-5

Scientists Found a Weird Way to Make People Kinder: Add Batman : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-found-a-weird-way-to-make-people-kinder-add-batman

Psychologists at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy conducted an experiment on the Milan subway to see whether passengers would offer their seats to a subject disguised as a pregnant woman with a large belly.

What's unusual about this experiment is that in addition to the condition that only the experimenter disguised as a pregnant woman was in the vehicle, another experimenter disguised as Batman was also in the same vehicle.

In the image below, the experimenter on the left is disguised as Batman, and the experimenter on the right is disguised as a pregnant woman. In this photo, the two are close together to capture the two at the same time, but during the experiment, they entered through separate entrances, stood several meters apart, and never interacted with each other to avoid any realization that they were conspiring together.

In a total of 138 experiments, the researchers found that when only a pregnant woman was present in the vehicle, passengers were more likely to offer their seat to the other person 37.66% of the time, while when Batman was also present, the rate rose to 67.21%. This suggests that people are more likely to be kind when Batman is nearby.

When the researchers asked people why they gave up their seats, the majority in both conditions cited 'recognizing a pregnant woman,' while others cited social norms, education, safety, etc. Interestingly, no one associated the act of giving up their seat with Batman; 43.75% of respondents said they 'didn't see Batman at all.'

The research team hypothesized that seeing an unexpected presence (Batman) in the environment may have increased people's self-awareness and made them more likely to notice others in need.

For example, if you're daydreaming while listening to a podcast or engrossed in a video on your phone during your morning commute, you're probably paying minimal attention to the people around you. But if someone dressed as Batman gets on your train, it's likely to draw your attention, and as a side effect, you're more likely to notice the pregnant woman in front of you who might need the seat more than you.

All of these effects may be unconscious, which is why none of the respondents associated their behavior with Batman. Even for those who didn't notice Batman, it's possible that his presence on the train caused other passengers to become agitated or move around, which in turn led to them paying more attention to their surroundings.

The change in passenger behavior may not just be due to heightened awareness of their surroundings. 'It's also possible that the image of a superhero heightened associations with cultural values, gender roles , and norms of chivalrous helping,' said Francesco Pagnini, a psychologist at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and lead author of the paper. 'This is consistent with research on priming effects involving superheroes. In other words, the image of Batman may play a prosocial priming role.'

As a future goal, the research team suggests conducting similar experiments with various characters other than Batman to determine whether this phenomenon is specific to Batman.