Virtual Superman Powers Boost Helpfulness; Video Games Score

There's now an incentive to let your kids play video games or pretend to be superheroes. A new study shows that having superpowers in a virtual world made people more likely to be helpful in real life.

The study, conducted by Robin Rosenberg and colleagues from Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, examined how using virtual reality experiences can increase pro-social behavior in the physical world. They created a virtual environment where 30 men and 30 women volunteers were provided with air-based missions. Some had the Superman-ability to fly while others had a helicopter. These participants were then assigned one of two tasks: help find a missing diabetic child in desperate need of an insulin injection, or tour their virtual environment. In total, there were four groupings of volunteers.

After the virtual reality experience, participants were taken out of their head-mounted-display masks and asked to take a seat. While a researcher fumbled with the VR equipment, she pretended to accidentally knock over a cup of 15 pens sitting on a table near the participant's chair.

The researchers found that the volunteers who experienced the power of flight in virtual reality were not only quicker to help pick up the pens, but also picked up more pens total. Only six participants didn't help, and they were all in the helicopter riding group. In addition, researchers noted that the different missions didn't make a difference whether or not the volunteers helped pick up the pens.

It turns out that video games can make a difference-at least for a short time. The researchers theorized that the participants who were given the ability to fly were likely primed and conditioned by superhero tropes commonly seen in pop culture. This would explain why they were more likely to help pick up the pens.

The study is one of the first to examine the effects of pro-social behavior in virtual reality, and could have huge potential. The researchers plan to test out the effects of having other superpowers as a follow-up, and want to see the effect of embodying a "real" superhero character like Superman on participants.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.