Clay Enos
Superheroes are saving the real world, too.
A study published in The Journal of Psychology in August found that superhero movies can promote prosocial behavior — actions that benefits other people or society as a whole.
Researchers wanted to see how the films that are typically filled with violence affect viewers in terms of empathy and moral reasoning.
The study involved two experiments, each with 200 Brazilian participants, who were assigned to either an experimental group or control group. Those in the experimental group watched a 3-minute and 47-second clip from 2016’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” where Ben Affleck’s Batman rescues a captured woman from armed villains.
The control group, meanwhile, watched a video of colorful shapes forming various patterns.
All participants then had to complete a prosocial behavior task, which involved them distributing pieces of chocolates to future participants. Their measure of prosocial behavior was determined based on how many chocolates they doled out.
In addition, the participants’ levels of empathy were measured after watching the videos. The scale has three types of empathy: affective empathy (sharing someone else’s feelings), cognitive empathy (understanding someone else’s feelings), and associative empathy (relating to someone else based on their feelings).
The second experiment involved moral justification, where participants had to decide if they thought Batman was justified being violent in the film.
The results discovered that participants who watched the scene in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” had higher levels of empathy. They had the highest associative empathy, meaning they related to Batman getting violent to save someone.
However, the participants who watched the clip from the film didn’t give a significant amount of more chocolate than the participants who watched the video of the colorful shapes.
Still, the superhero group scored higher on the empathy scale overall.
Meanwhile, the second study found that moral reasoning played a big part in the prosocial behavior tests. Participants in the superhero ground found Batman’s actions to be moral and justified, and thus were more likely to do things to help other people.
The study did point out some flaws from the results, such as possible distractions that may have occurred when participants were watching the videos.
It was also mentioned that the chocolate distribution was the only prosocial behavior task used in the study, and that task is not the deciding factor in determining prosocial actions in the real world.
Last year, a different study from the International Journal of Research found that superhero movies have various negative affects on viewers, including increased aggression, decreased attention span, decreased critical thinking skills, increased anxiety and stress, decreased physical activity, sexism, racism, and more.
However, this latest study from The Journal of Psychology, which was authored by Isabella Leandra Silva Santos and Carlos Eduardo Pimentel, shows that there are far more positives to watching superhero movies than most people have probably realized.
And besides the rare exceptions like “Joker 2,” most superhero films like “Deadpool and Wolverine” are continuing to enjoy success at the theater after all these years.