Before he became one of the best basketball players in the world, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was a 13-year-old point guard with a significant problem: He was tiny.
Standing around 5-foot-6, Gilgeous-Alexander possessed the physique of a garden rake — skinny and slight. He would wake before 6 a.m. each day to work on his game at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School, but his size presented obvious limitations. So Dwayne Washington, his club coach and a teacher at the school, suggested he pretend to be Allen Iverson, the undersized guard whose fearless style had revolutionized the NBA.
In the annals of youth coaching, it wasn’t exactly a novel idea. What kid hasn’t pretended to be their favorite player — MJ in the finals, Tiger at the Masters, Serena at Wimbledon?
Washington, however, was a science teacher, a self-described nerd with a love of movies and big ideas. He wanted Gilgeous-Alexander to fully commit to the role, to embody the classic traits of Iverson — the feisty attitude, the toughness, the courage to throw his diminutive body into the lane.
The way Washington saw it, Hollywood actors like Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise use the same trick.
“They are tough guys in the movies, but they are playing a role,” he said last year. “So when you step on the court, that’s like being in front of the camera. You’re not yourself.”
Gilgeous-Alexander obliged. In a small gym outside Toronto, he became Iverson, training with reckless abandon. The role-play helped him eliminate his doubts, create a mindset and overcome his physical limitations. He started playing with no fear.
In time, he would grow to be 6-foot-6, an NBA champion and league MVP, his childhood alter ego just a step on his path to stardom with the Oklahoma City Thunder. But what if Washington had actually stumbled upon something bigger?
What if everyone could benefit from pretending to be someone else?
In the early 2010s, a group of leading U.S. psychologists began a study to test how young children could increase their perseverance and grit.
A group of 6-year-olds was asked to complete a monotonous task on a computer — pressing a key whenever an image of cheese appeared. The researchers told the kids it was an important job; they would be “a good helper” if they worked hard. But they also offered a distraction — an alternative iPad game that the children could choose at any time.
It was an analogue for real life: Tedious work versus mindless screen time. But the researchers added a wrinkle:
A third of the kids were told to reflect on their effort in the first person. (“Am I working hard?”)
Another third were told to reflect in the third person, using their own name. (“Is Joey working hard?”)
And the final third was given the option to be Batman or Dora the Explorer, complete with costumes for each character.
Just as the researchers predicted, the children pretending to be Batman or Dora worked the longest, the superhero mindset seemingly rubbing off. But the results also revealed something fascinating: The further the kids got from their first-person selves, the harder they worked.
The study became known as the “Batman Effect,” a breakthrough in the larger field of psychological distancing, the idea that people can benefit from stepping outside themselves and viewing their lives from a different point of view. It also provided scientific evidence for something athletes have been doing for decades — using an alter ego to help them perform on the field.
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“What you’re talking about with alter egos really gets at this fundamental human capacity that we all possess,” said Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the Batman Effect. “You are making a decision to adopt not just a different point of view, but a specific kind of alternative point of view that is linked with success.”
