Follow-up research found that when Maternal Control (subject's mother) replaced batman, people were 8,000% more likely to give up their seat.

Ohhhh, ok

He's holding the mask in his hand.

no mask, no ears, is this Batman's non-union Mexican equivalent?

I don't know if this photo is representative of the "pregnant woman" used in the test. But, she's not CLEARLY pregnant. People from some parts of the world put on a lot of belly fat. A female friend of mine, approaching 60 but in great aerobic shape, has a belly bigger than that.

A candidate for an Ig Nobel prize?

Pro-social priming: fancy name for Kindness Floats

What happens if you put Batman in the Oval Office?

My favourite part of this study is the ethics panel banning Batman’s mask over fears it could cause distress to passengers

When they tried with Spider-Man, all of the passengers (including the “pregnant“ woman) would lift him up and pass him to the front of the train car. Confounded the whole experiment.

WHAT ABOJT SPIder mAN??

As a daily Metro rider, I freely admit that a weirdo dressed as Batman would have me look up long enough to see the pregnant woman I wouldn't have spotted unless something weird made me look up.

We're travelling in our little cocoons, taking care not to care about anyone else. It's all rather sad.

what's interesting to me is their hypothesis that it is the appearance of the unusual that caused the effect. not any sort of association with shame of looking badly in front of the caped crusader. so you should see the same effect with a clown or a furry

Very interesting and creative. Fascinating

Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%, OR = 3.393, p < 0.001).

You can’t stop there. Was the hypothesis demonstrated?

The next step is clearly to see which Batman has the greatest impact. Do people give up their seat more readily if the costume evokes comedic Adam West Batman, emo Robert Pattinson Batman, roid bro Batflek, the Bale/Nolan version, or whatever Schumacher was up to with all that leather?

So they were just like "nah?"

A journalist needs to untangle this.
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