A woman with a prosthetic pregnancy belly boards a crowded train.  Researchers recorded how many people gave up a seat.

In the control condition, it is just her and an observer. In the experimental condition, everything is identical except a second experimenter, dressed recognizably as Batman, boards from another door and stands a few meters away.

No interaction or theatrics, just a silent, caped anomaly in the corner.  Results?

• In the “normal” condition, roughly 38 percent of rides saw someone offer a seat.
• With Batman present, that jumps to about 67 percent.
• The odds of helping are more than tripled (OR 3.39).

When researchers asked helpers, almost half report never seeing Batman.  So the cape produces more prosocial behavior in people who do not recall the cape. That tells you something important, the mechanism is not “I saw Batman and consciously decided to live up to heroic values.” The mechanism is upstream of any story they tell themselves later.

What is actually going on?

• Script disruption and attention shift. An unexpected figure breaks the commuter script and forces a small reevaluation of the scene. That heightened situational awareness makes other cues, like a pregnant woman standing, more salient. This is close to the “pique technique” literature, where atypical requests or stimuli disrupt automatic responses and increase compliance.
• Symbolic priming. Batman is a prosocial, protective cultural symbol. Even without conscious processing, his presence may bump up the salience of helping norms and chivalry. The authors point to superhero priming studies that show similar effects.
• Social contagion. Attention is social. Some people clearly see Batman, orient differently, start scanning, and change body language. That altered state and any early helping behavior can spread through the carriage. So a person who never noticed the cape can still be influenced by the disruption that started it.

The common thread is not mindfulness workshops or better values, it is state change. Break routine, shift attention, and prosocial behavior becomes more likely even when the person cannot tell you why.  Fundraising often ignores this and behaves like a control condition, obsessing over message content inside a world where donors are on autopilot. Then we’re surprised when “better” creative underperforms.

We need to design the Batman part first.

What positive disruption looks like when you do not have a cape

This is not a license for gimmicks, those are lazy disruption. The Batman intervention worked because it was unexpected but non threatening, and it did not hijack the whole scene.  You want the same thing in fundraising: small, intentional pattern breaks that reset attention and make it easier for generosity to surface.

1. Digital pattern breaks that affect state, not just aesthetics

You are not going to get a 3x lift in prosocial behavior by swapping one stock photo of a sad child for another. You might get closer by changing the whole perceptual entry point.

Examples:

• A campaign that usually opens emails with a crowded hero image starts one send with a nearly empty frame and a single, precise fact in large type. That contrast against the prior run of communications is the disruption.
• A landing page that normally leads with a long block of copy starts the next test with a single behavioral choice prompt and the usual narrative only below the fold. The change in structure, not a new headline adjective, is what matters.
• A social video that avoids the frantic montage and instead opens on two seconds of silence and stillness. In a feed full of motion and noise, the absence becomes the anomaly that earns a second look.

The goal is to change the donor’s attentional state long enough for the existing prosocial norms to fire. You are not trying to out-clever every other charity. You are trying to get people to actually inhabit the moment when you ask.

2. Journey sequencing as habituation management

The Batman study is also about sequence. The commuters had a clear baseline of “normal metro ride” that got disrupted. Your donors have a baseline of “normal nonprofit message” that you keep reinforcing.

If your cadence is a monthly appeal with the same layout, emotional key, and call to action, you are training people to ignore you. That is not a relationship, it’s conditioned inattention.  Deliberately engineered disruptions in the journey can reset that.

• Replace one appeal in the series with a brutally short, factual update that does not ask, only reports.
• Follow a run of heavy, affective stories with something that uses a lighter tone or even gentle self awareness about the volume of asks.
• Move from solo, one-way communication to a true question that requires the donor to choose or express a preference, then feed that preference back later.

You treat this as random creativity now. It should be scheduled state management. Decide where you want Batman moments in your calendar, not just where you want “Q4 revenue.”

3. Crowded channels and ambient disruption

In DRTV and social, you compete in an environment that is already visually noisy. Nobody is sitting with a warm drink, thoughtfully processing your spot.  Here, the Batman lesson is that the disruption does not need to be the message, it only needs to be enough to nudge people out of numb scrolling.

Examples:

• In a DRTV spot, lead with an image that is strangely still for two beats. No music, no VO, just an uncomfortably long shot of something that contradicts what people expect from a charity ad in that category. Then move into the narrative.
• In social, use humor or self awareness right up front, not as a tag at the end. A climate nonprofit that opens a reel with, “Here is the part where we try to scare you straight again,” is acknowledging the script and breaking it at the same time.

You are creating a state where the viewer is alert enough to actually hear the serious part. Most current work tries to do it backwards: maximum drama first, then hopes people do not tune out.

Direct mail, novelty, and trait fit

The sector has already discovered a crude version of Batman in direct mail. The oversized 8×12 envelope tends to beat the standard #10 on response. It sticks out of the stack, feels non routine, and gets handled differently. There is nothing mystical about it. In a world of #10s, the anomaly wins.

If tomorrow every charity switched to 8×12 as the default, the advantage would evaporate. The #10 would suddenly be the novel object.

So on average, non standard packages “work” because they are atypical, not because there is anything inherently superior about them. Fundraisers get this halfway right, then wreck it by sending the same expensive, “creative” format to everyone and acting confused when the economics look mediocre.

Novelty is not free. The artistic, odd-fold, high production piece costs more and will lose on average if you blast it to a file that includes a lot of people who find that kind of novelty irritating or untrustworthy.  But what if you apply insights about the person?

• High Openness donors tend to seek out variety, aesthetic interest, and new experiences. For them, the offbeat format is not just disruptive, it is also intrinsically rewarding.  This is Novelty + Fit.
• Low Openness, highly structured donors will often prefer a very conventional, formal package. For them, the “weird” envelope is not Batman, it is a stranger in a clown suit.

Both groups experience a version of disruption that suits them, one through aesthetic novelty, the other through the relief of a piece that feels like it finally “fits” how they think.  This is the same underlying lesson as the metro study. The effect is not in the prop, it’s the interaction between the disruption and the person’s baseline state.

What about humor in “serious” causes?

The sector tends to treat humor as trivializing serious issues but the empirical record on humor is more nuanced.

• A meta analysis of 89 studies on humor and persuasion finds that humor has a small but reliable positive effect on attitude change and is especially good at drawing attention to messages and increasing liking for the source.
• Reviews of humor in health and risk messaging reach similar conclusions. Humor can be an effective alternative to pure fear appeals because it reduces defensiveness, lowers anxiety around the topic, and can make people more open to considering recommended actions.
• A systematic review of humor based public health campaigns reports that humor strategies often increase awareness and help seeking for stigmatised issues when handled well.

There are landmines of course, done badly, humor can reinforce stigma or blow up trust, especially if you are punching down or mocking the affected group. Studies in mental health stigma show that aggressive humor from outsiders can make things worse, while humor that comes from within the group or is clearly aligned with them can help.

So the question is not “is humor allowed in serious causes” but rather, are you are skilled enough and disciplined enough to use it as a precision tool rather than a cheap joke.

From a Batman perspective, humor is another way to engineer positive disruption since it’s rare in this sector and that rarity is exactly why it can work.   Again, trait fit matters. High Openness and Extraversion donors are more likely to reward intelligent humor. Highly anxious or highly conscientious donors might require a narrower band of tone. Knowing who is who lets you be braver where the ground can support it, and more restrained where it cannot.

The next tweak to story structure is not going to materially change things because you had a pregnant woman in both conditions. You had the same norm and the same “case for support”, change the attentional state and behavior changes, even for people who have no story to tell about why.

Kevin