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The team devised a “Superman” test in which subjects donned virtual reality goggles and were dropped into an evacuated city.
Some were told that they had superhuman powers, and had to deliver a shot of insulin to a diabetic child stranded somewhere nearby. “You lift your arms above your head to fly, and rotate your body to go in another direction - just like Superman in the movies,” says Bailenson.
Other participants were taken on a tourists’ helicopter ride around the city instead.
Once the child had been found, or the helicopter ride was complete, the participants sat through an interview that they were not told was part of the experiment. Halfway through the meeting, the researcher would knock over a pot of stationery on a desk.
Interviewees who had been given superhuman powers in the virtual world rushed to help clean up the mess more often than those who had not - many of whom did nothing at all.

Good art should elicit a response of ‘Huh? Wow!’ as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?’

When 12 [75 years ago] I was out working as a delivery boy for the local grocer. Then I got caught delivering tomatoes by the man from the school board and my parents were taken to court. The summons said I had been working under age “delivering vegetables”. My solicitor pointed out that tomatoes were a fruit and the case was dismissed. I still use the same firm of solicitors today.

Trans mare ducatur catus, mau vociferatur.

I don’t know about hierarchy. I think it’s a psychological thing. But then, why should I behave differently to the cleaning lady in the house to Mr Arnault? We are all humans.

‘It is demonstrably true,’ he would say, ‘that things cannot be other than as they are. For, everything having been made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose. Observe how noses were made to bear spectacles, and so we have spectacles. Legs are evidently devised to be clad in breeches, and breeches we have. Stones were formed in such a way that they can be hewn and made into castles, and so His Lordship has a very beautiful castle. The greatest baron in the province must be the best lodged. And since pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round. Consequently, those who have argued that all is well have been talking nonsense. They should have said that all is for the best.’

Candide