The tennis ball hits the net for the fifth time in a row. You are discouraged and want to give up. But then you picture Serena Williams serving the ball flawlessly over the net. You picture her form, her swing, the racket’s contact with the ball, and her follow through. Thinking about how Serena would handle the situation gives you the motivation you need to keep trying until you are finally successful. This strategy of taking a step back from the problem you were having with your serve and reflecting on ways you could change your technique to serve the ball successfully is an example of the “Batman Effect.” Researchers have studied this strategy with young children by having them use role-play during challenging tasks to help improve their performance.  

Previous Research on the Batman Effect

The Batman Effect refers to the finding that children perform better on a challenging task if they pretend to be someone else, such as Batman, who would be good at the task.^1,2 Previous studies have shown that children who pretend to be a competent media character persist longer on boring tasks and perform better on executive function (EF) tasks than children who think about themselves from a first-person perspective.^1,2 Taking the perspective of a person more competent than themselves allows children to reflect on the problem and think about it from different angles. It creates “psychological distance” or mental space between themselves and the challenging task and helps them imagine a role model. Although previous research suggests that the Batman Effect is a useful strategy, it has been largely unknown whether it is more useful for some children than for others.  

Recent Study on Who Benefits Most from the Batman Effect

In one of our recent studies, we answered this question by inviting 139 4- and 6-year-olds to our lab at the University of Minnesota. We wanted to see if role play would be helpful for children to manage feelings of frustration. So how did we frustrate them? We locked a toy inside a clear box and gave them a large set of keys to try to find the one that would open the box. And here’s the tricky part: Although children believed that the key ring contained the right key, in reality, it did not have a single key that would open the box. Frustrating indeed! Children were given up to 10 minutes or until they decided they were done trying to work on unlocking the box. During the task, we measured how frustrated children were and how well they were able to regulate their frustration. Before working on the task, children were given instructions to think about their thoughts and feelings from different perspectives. Children in the self-immersed group were asked to think about their thoughts and feelings during the task using first-person speech (e.g., “How am I feeling?”). Children in the third-person group were asked to think about their thoughts and feelings using their name (e.g., How is [child’s name] feeling?). Children in the exemplar group were asked to pick a popular media character (e.g., Batman, Dora the Explorer, Rapunzel, or Bob the Builder) and given a prop to help them get into character (e.g., cape, backpack, tiara, or tool belt). These children were then asked to think about how the character they chose would think and feel (e.g., “How is Batman feeling?). Our goal in this study was to figure out if certain children would find it more helpful to pretend to be a media character than others. To do this, we looked at differences in children’s EF skills, the brain-based skills that are used to control one’s thoughts and feelings to accomplish goals. Would children with higher EF skills or children who struggle the most with EF benefit more from this strategy?