I found this interesting. Frank Landymore reports at Futurism:
Folks, we have some revolutionary sociological research to share with you today.
After making a guy dressed as Batman stand around in a subway car, a team of researchers found that the behavior of people around him suddenly improved the moment he showed up. No longer was everyone completely self-involved; with the presence of a superhero, commuters started helping each other more than they would’ve without him around.
Behold: the “Batman effect.”
The findings of the unorthodox study, published in the journal npj Mental Health Research, demonstrate the power of introducing something offbeat into social situations to jolt people out of the mental autopilot they slip into to navigate the drudgery of everyday life.
Batman showing up is just one — albeit striking — way of promoting what’s called “prosocial behavior,” or the act of helping others around you, via introducing an unexpected event, the researchers write.
“Our findings are similar to those of previous research linking present-moment awareness (mindfulness) to greater prosociality,” said study lead author Francesco Pagnini, a professor of clinical psychology at the Università Cattolica in Milan, in a statement about the work. “This may create a context in which individuals become more attuned to social cues.”
Conscience, a fully internalized force, promoting “prosocial behaviors” is not a culturally universal characteristic—it is limited to what are called “guilt cultures” (as opposed to “shame cultures”) which is what ours has historically been. It’s amazing how belief in an omniscient, watchful, and potentially vengeful God will do for those behaviors.
Such behaviors can also be promoted by less internalized forces such as universal, omnipresent surveillance. That is the direction in which many societies are heading. Maybe even our own.
Since Batman is unlikely to cooperate, all things considered I think that more widespread belief in an omniscient, watchful, and, potentially vengeful God would be preferable to Big Brother but, believe me, we will have one, the other, or both.
Dave, you might appreciate the way the Batman angle ties into this old post:
https://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2004/06/social-harmony.html
My goodness! I used to read Grim’s stuff frequently but not for years.
The thoughts expressed in that post reflect a point I’ve been mulling over. That a behavior is “rooted in biology” does not mean it is pro-social. Culture, promoted by propaganda and social pressure, serves to cultivate control over behaviors rooted in biology.
The natural basin of attraction for all human societies, regardless of starting political structure, is “strong-man anarchy with hidden-hand mafia characteristics.”
The most ruthlessly self-interested always end up running everything behind the scenes.
In order to inhabit the higher, more attractive real estate in that fitness landscape, closer to the peaks in the standing waves of the human societal terrain than the valleys (or indeed to the abyss), one must engineer ways for civilization NOT to slide down into the attractor.
One way to do this is to pair strength with wisdom (experience), as Grim suggests, so that the civilizational values are passed down through the generations: from a long enough view, “ruthless self-interest” comes to mean “working together.”
It’s a good post.
I am reminded of an old polling question about the adage “with age comes wisdom”. A large proportion of people younger than 60 agreed with it; those over 60 who believed it were far fewer, ironically providing support for the adage.