The "Batman Effect" and "Wall Fly"... Psychological tricks that help you control your thinking and feelings

"They think I'm hiding in the shadows, but I'm the shadows."

(Batman from "Batman 2022")

Bruce Wayne, a wealthy, handsome and playful businessman, is an orphan, a selfish person who only cares about fulfilling her own desires and pursuing life's pleasures.

But when night falls over Gotham City, another figure emerges from the shadows of a man clad in black, who works to purge the corrupt city of criminals, endangering his life every day for the sake of its ignorant inhabitants, sometimes accusing him of criminality as well.

This man does not suffer from a personality disorder, and does not try to be a hypocrite in any way, but simply wears the "playboy suit" during the day, while at night he wears the black robe characteristic of the "the vigilante" character.

Bruce Wayne uses a clever psychological trick that enables him to achieve his true goal stemming from his love for his city, without affecting his public image. Have you heard of the "Batman Effect" before?

Batman movie 2022

get away from yourself

Previous research in adults indicated that “self-distancing” relieves and helps control emotions, while the results of studies in children have shown that self-distancing strategies help children persevere in completing the tasks required of them, despite The odds are, despite the presence of external distractions.

This process is categorized under the brain's "executive functions," which also include working memory, problem-solving, flexible thinking, and self-control.

Now let's delve a little deeper into the concept of "self-distancing", which is defined as "the ability of an individual to detach from oneself and view it from afar as a neutral person".

(1).

There are several levels to this separation;

The first level is “self-immersion”, in which the distance between you and yourself is zero, you address yourself in the form of “I”, and you unite with yourself while performing your tasks.

The second level is the "third person", here you are far enough away from yourself to see another person, you talk about him in the form of "he", you observe him while he performs the tasks and evaluate his performance.

As for the third stage, which is the strongest of the three, it is the "Exemplar", you are no longer you in the first place, you are a completely different character, possessing abilities and qualities different from your original self, and you talk about yourself as this character, to be the character of "Batman". Now you are the same dark knight.

Use the model's strategy by taking on the role of a fictional character and acquiring its abilities.

Hence the term "Batman effect", which is your ability to take on a different personality than your original self, giving you greater self-control and accomplish difficult tasks.

Psychologists Rachel White and Stephanie Carlson and others studied this effect at a critical stage in the formation of a child's personality, the preschool age.

At this stage, “perseverance” is usually one of the important keys to success, from the perseverance of a young child trying to pronounce words until he succeeds, to the student who remembers physics in high school even though he does not like it, to the hardworking young man who works day and night to develop his own project.

Perseverance, by definition, includes persistence in your work, your attempts, your study until you succeed, despite the difficulty of the material, the presence of external distractions, and the delay in the reward you will receive for your success.

To study the levels of perseverance in children using different self-distancing strategies, a group of children aged 3-5 years were chosen to test the executive functions of the brain, and they were divided into 3 groups, each with a different level of “self-distancing”, and then they were presented with a set of Tasks such as sorting the cards and determining the direction of the different fish to test their ability to complete these tasks to the end.

The first group was asked to assume their true selves and to address themselves "Where should I put this card?"

While performing the tasks, the second group was asked to address themselves “Where should (child’s name) put this card?”, as if a third person is watching what is happening from afar.

As for the third group, they were asked to take on the fictional character of four of the characters they were shown, including Batman, and to address themselves with the formula "Where should Batman put this card?"

To enhance the character's influence, each child was given a token representing their chosen character, such as a Batman's robe or a Dora the Explorer bag.

When the child takes on an alternate personality, he becomes more persistent in completing tasks even in the presence of various distractions.

The study was published in Developmental Science, and looking at the results, two observations are very clear.

First, three-year-olds failed to persevere in the tasks assigned to them, despite using self-distancing strategies, unlike five-year-olds.

In the study, the researchers suggest that this effect is due to the lack of development of the "theory of mind" in younger children, which is a basic process aimed at differentiating between the self, its desires and thoughts, and between others, their desires and thoughts.

The second observation is that the child's ability to persevere in the tasks increases with the increasing distance between him and himself, that is, in the case of the reincarnation of a fictional character or an "alternative self".

What would Batman do?

Well, what if the tasks became more challenging and boring?

And what if we added some distractions to the recipe?

This is what the two scientists did in a second study, published in the journal Child Development, in which a new group of children aged 4-6 years was selected and divided into 3 groups, each using a different strategy of disassociation from the self.

The task of sorting cards has been replaced by a different task on the computer, with a distraction in the form of a game on the "iPad" that the child can play with whenever he is bored with the task at hand.

Children were constantly reminded of the nature of the level of self-distancing by computerized messages saying: Are you working hard?

Or does (baby name) work hard?

Or does Batman work hard?

(2).

Here, the tasks became more difficult for children by deliberately making them more boring, and by placing the iPad distraction, but this did not prevent children in the third level from distancing themselves, from persevering in their boring tasks, and resisting the temptation of the game.

It appears that children who were asked to think of the task as if they were someone else - Batman or another character - were less likely to indulge in "immediate gratification", and more capable of being patient and working toward a relatively long-term goal.

From the famous "marshmallow experiment", we can see that children tend to have "instant gratification" at the expense of a delayed reward.

These two experiments give us a glimpse into the 'Batman effect' or the use of 'model' for self-disassociation and the promotion of 'perseverance' in children.

It is important here to focus on choosing the alternative character. This character must have the necessary ingredients to persevere in work and succeed in the tasks. There is no point in being a fictional evil or lazy character.

You are supposed to choose a character who makes up for your imperfection, one who is more assertive, braver or more persuasive.

You can use this trick to encourage your child to complete their assignments, but what about you?

Some books and articles claim that, as an adult, you can create an "alter ego" to take over boring meetings and difficult tasks for you, and achieve what your current self cannot achieve in your working life.

In his book The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transtorm your Life, presenter and public speaker Todd Herman takes you on a detailed journey of how Creating an alternate self through which you will achieve success in your life, citing several examples of television and art celebrities who used the same strategy and led to their overwhelming success in their working lives.

The Alternative Self Influence: The Power of Secret Personalities That Will Change Your Life.

But there are not yet solid studies in adults that say that the alternate self can be used to overcome difficult situations.

Despite the acceptance and enthusiasm the idea may meet, the articles and books published in this regard remain purely personal experiences and opinions that are not based on scientific evidence.

But there are studies on the effect of “self-distancing” in adults, to increase control of emotions and behavior, and reduce anger, and give us more corroborative evidence that a strategy such as the “third person” or “wall fly” succeeds in reducing stress and calming disturbed feelings and violent tendencies.

wall fly

One such study found that disassociation from oneself in situations that trigger emotions, whether positive or negative, not only reduce the strength of those feelings, but also reduce their duration.

This may not seem encouraging in the case of positive emotions, we certainly want to feel happy more and for a longer period, but in the case of negative emotions, such as extreme sadness, fear or anxiety, this strategy becomes very effective in overcoming the difficulties of daily life.

If you feel less anxious each day, you will be able to live a better life (3).

In another study, the ability of a group of athletes to control anger and violence in artificial situations was tested in the lab, comparing their behavior in the self-immersion and self-distancing states.

The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found that self-distancing and externalizing the situation can reduce anger and violent behavior in athletes, compared to self-indulgence (4).

Self-distancing helps athletes reduce anger and violent behavior in provocative situations.

To take advantage of "self-distancing" to control your emotions in difficult times, you can try some of the following strategies: Imagine that you are taking an important exam in the future, and this exam will determine your entire career destiny, you are now feeling stressed and afraid of the possibility of failure.

Now imagine that you are just a fly standing on the wall quietly and observing the situation indifferently, as if you are watching someone else who does not concern you taking the exam.

This outer eye that watches the situation creates an appropriate distance between you and the event, calming your feelings, and reducing your anxiety about that exam yet to come (5).

What if you are in an embarrassing or irritating situation in the present?

Your co-worker made fun of you in front of everyone, making you a laughingstock in the office.

You are now feeling angry and thinking of returning the insult to the owner or perhaps taking a violent reaction against him.

It helps here that the disassociation is physical before it is psychological. Leaving the room, for example, creates physical distance between you and the situation, and gives you an opportunity to think of it as a third person who is not involved.

Now imagine that you are a visitor from outside the office who just came and saw the situation, how would you analyze the situation?

What do you think now of the motive behind your colleague's insult to you?

And what civilized reaction would you take when you came back?

(6)

Repenting of sadness and negative feelings when remembering painful situations from the past is an example of immersion in oneself and oneness with oneself.

If you suffer from this problem, you can also use self-distancing to reduce the emotional outbursts associated with remembering traumatic events. Instead of remembering events as if they happened to you, try to make yourself an objective friend who looks at memories impartially.

The goal here is not to change or erase the memories, but rather to control the turbulent feelings that accompany them. Your virtual friend was not involved in these memories and therefore will not feel the same heightened feelings, just as if your real friend would act if you recounted your memories (7).

The famous American psychologist Aaron Beck, one of the founders of cognitive psychology, considers that the ability to distance oneself is a prerequisite for the success of cognitive therapy, and that the long-term success of treatment depends on success in teaching patients how to distance themselves on their own without help.

So, even if you couldn't create an entirely alternate character like Bruce Wayne did, you can at least ask yourself when faced with a difficult situation: What would (your name) do?

Or to assume the character of a fly and fly to the ceiling of the room and contemplate the situation from afar.

With a little practice and practice, you can master this trick, leading to more rational thinking, and more stable feelings.

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