The Batman Effect – Creating an Alternate You
How can you keep moving when something is frustrating, painful, or boring? One way of making it through the circumstances that are devised to compel you to give up is to form an alter ego who always leverages the opportunity. This is called "the Batman Effect"- coined owing to Bruce Wayne's continuous struggle to suppress obstacles being a mere mortal – that refers to kids doing better in tasks if they simulate some other character, who is majorly successful in those tasks. Earlier investigations have revealed that kids pretending to be proficient media characters continue longer on tedious tasks and do better on executive function tasks versus kids thinking about themselves from the first-person point of view. Taking the viewpoint of individuals more efficiently than themselves enables kids to reflect on the challenge and perceive it from various angles. It forms mental space or “psychological distance” between themselves and the effort-intensive task and helps t...
