Have you ever wondered how the way you see yourself changes your reality? In this episode, I break down a fascinating study called the Batman Effect—where kids who dressed as superheroes performed better under pressure. But this isn’t just about kids, your self-perception is shaping your success right now. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube
Chapter 1: How does self-perception influence your reality?
It's absolutely free, and I'll take you through step-by-step how to create your own morning priming routine. Today, we're going to be talking about how your thoughts and your words shape your reality. And I know I just recently did a podcast episode about the power of your words and how it shapes your reality.
But today's episode, I'm actually going to show you an example, actually a couple of examples. that show you how the way that you speak to yourself, the way that you think about yourself, actually shows the results that you're going to get in your life. One of my favorite studies about this is a study that's called the Batman Effect.
Chapter 2: What is the Batman Effect and how does it work?
And so the Batman Effect was a study that they did on children a few years ago that were between four years old and six years old. And they took these children and they put them into three different groups. One of the groups, all they did was they just walked into a room and they did puzzles. And just so you know, these puzzles were unsolvable.
So they put these children into a room, they gave them puzzles that were completely unsolvable. That's group one. Group two, they put them into the room to do puzzles. But what they said to them is try to see yourself doing them first. from outside of yourself. So they taught them basically about what it would look like to look at yourself from a third person.
So basically looking at yourself with more self-awareness is what they were teaching the children. So that was group number two. And then group number three, they had them do the puzzles. But before they did the puzzles, they had to pick a costume of their favorite costume that they wanted to wear. So one of them was a Batman cape. Another one was a Wonder Woman outfit.
Chapter 3: How do children react to challenges in the Batman Effect study?
Another one was Dora the Explorer. Another one was their favorite Disney princess. And so they had them go in dressed up to see if maybe things change if they were dressed up as their favorite character. So group one, which was they just put them into the room and said, hey, do puzzles, did the worst out of all three groups.
Group two, which was the group that looked at themselves with more self-awareness, did 13% better than group number one. And so it's this idea of like self-distancing. They basically looked at themselves from outside of themselves. And because they were in a way watching themselves, they decided to work a little bit more and go a little bit further.
Group three did 23% better than group number one. And that was the best one. And they found out that group three, the ones that were dressed up as Batman or Dora the Explorer, their favorite Disney princess, were more resilient and more diligent in trying to solve the problems. Group one, the children actually gave up really quickly that they were surprised with.
Chapter 4: What role does self-talk play in children's performance?
And what they ended up finding out, and this is a really interesting part of the study, is that the children, their self-talk while they were quote unquote failing and not figuring this out was mostly negative. So children, listen to this, between four to six years old, their self-talk was mostly negative.
So they would be doing it and they weren't solving the problem and they would say stuff like, I can't do this, or this is too hard, or I'm not smart enough, or I'm not old enough to get this. Now let's take a real quick step back, right? Okay. They're children between four and six years old. Where do you think that they got those thoughts from of, I can't do this. It's too hard.
I'm not smart enough. I'm not old enough to do this. Where do you, do you think those are the thoughts that just popped into their heads? Or do you think maybe they got them from somewhere? Yeah, they probably got them, most likely, from their parents talking to them or hearing their parents talking to themselves around them.
And so without the self-awareness of them having to watch themselves, like group two, the children were basically on autopilot, which means that they were working from their unconscious programmings.
What I mean by that is they were working from what they have seen other people do and what they have seen other people say about themselves, and they were working from what they have been told from other people as well. Now think about this for a second. Once again, this is children between four to six years old.
They say that your full self-identity is not even built fully until you're about seven years old. When did you learn to give up? Like, when did you learn what fear was? When did you learn what to fear? When did you learn who you were? Good, bad, too loud, too much, quiet, good boy, good girl, whatever it might have been. Let me give you a real quick example. Does a baby decide to stop walking?
because it's taking too long to get it. I've never heard the story of the baby who decided to just stop walking and stop trying. No, they persist. They don't understand language yet, so they don't understand their parents' words around them, so they don't understand what quote-unquote failure means. They don't know what it means to give up.
But at some point, we as children, we learn what we can and cannot do. We learn how to give up. We learn what to fear. Now, the cool thing is when the children are seeing themselves from outside of themselves, so they're seeing it from an outsider's perspective, it's almost as if they're being watched so they want to do better. So most of them are now becoming more self-aware.
They're more self-aware. They're watching themselves versus just running off of programs. They're not running off of old programmings and whatever they might have been taught from their parents or from brothers or sisters. And the coolest thing about this is the children that were wearing the costumes, their self-talk and the way they spoke to themselves out loud actually changed.
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Chapter 5: How does self-perception affect adults differently?
Because what you believe of you and yourself will be your absolute max of what you can achieve. If you want more for yourself, you have to believe more of yourself. Your belief of yourself, your self-perception is the thing that needs to be worked on. So it created this study, basically this bucket of psychology of enclosed cognition, which is great.
It works on kids, but how does this relate to adults? Well, I'm so glad that you asked. There's now been a bunch of studies on adults of enclosed cognition. And there was a study that was done called the Influence of Clothes on Cognitive Processes in 2010. And the study looked at how uniform clothing affects cognitive processing.
And so it particularly looked on how it impacts feelings of your power and control. And so their methodology was basically this. Participants were asked to wear formal business attire, or another group was asked to wear casual clothing. And what they did was they had them complete tasks that assess their abstract thinking. And abstract thinking is a measure that is linked to a sense of power.
And so the results were pretty interesting. Participants that had the formal attire on, that were dressed up, exhibited more abstract thinking, which correlates to a heightened sense of power. They think higher of themselves. They subconsciously, or maybe even consciously, viewed themselves differently based off of what it is that they were wearing. It's not just the Batman outfit.
It's also, for some people, formal attire. And so consciously or subconsciously, these people viewed themselves differently based off of the way that they were dressed. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. We've all had this before, right? You decide that you're going to go to a nicer thing.
Maybe you're taking your, it's Valentine's Day and you're going to take your wife out and you decide to wear a suit. You decide to put on a tie and you get more formal or maybe you go to a wedding and you look at yourself in the mirror and it's something that you haven't worn in a while and you're like, shit, I look pretty good. And you think you're looking good. You walk a little bit different.
You talk a little bit different. You have better posture. You put your shoulders back more. You don't lean over as much. There's been many studies on this. The original study that was done like in clothed cognition was called in clothed cognition.
And the study, what they actually did was they were trying to figure out if a lab coat would affect the way that somebody reacted and the way they participated. And so what they have is they would look like, hey, if we bring a lab coat in, will it affect the participant's attention? And the researchers performed several different experiments where the attire was changed.
And so what they did was experiment one, they had participants wear a lab coat and they described the lab coat, this is the important part of it, of a doctor's coat. And when they had a lab coat that was called a doctor's coat, the people who wore it had increased sustained attention compared to those who were wearing regular street clothes. So it's really interesting.
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