Any grown-up would be surprised to see SpongeBob Squarepants show up in a Batman movie. Clearly, these characters inhabit two different fantasy worlds: one lives in a fabulous mansion near bustling Gotham City, while the other inhabits an underwater pineapple. Grown-ups divide fantasy worlds into non-intersecting sets: If Batman has even heard of SpongeBob, he would believe him to be a fictional character.
But what about children? Do they have the same understanding of the distinction between separate fictional worlds? Kids do understand the difference between reality and make-believe from a very young age, but this doesn’t discount the possibility that for children, there are only two worlds: fantasy and reality. Deena Skolnick and Paul Bloom have created a simple pair of studies to find out if kids view fantasy worlds the same way grown-ups do.
In the first study, they asked adults and four-year-olds to identify pictures of characters from nine different fictional worlds, including Spider-Man, Finding Nemo, and Blue’s Clues. If they knew the main character (e.g. SpongeBob), then they were asked if they knew another character (e.g. Mr. Krabs). Subsequent questions only involved the worlds and characters the kids were familiar with. Next, they were asked to name one of their friends, indicating whether he or she was real or make-believe. Kids who failed to answer this question correctly were also excluded from the analysis (interestingly, five adults who answered “make believe” were also excluded from the study).
Finally, they were asked about the fictional characters. There were three types of questions: reality/fantasy (do you think Batman is make-believe?), fantasy/fantasy (does Batman think Nemo is real or make-believe?), and between-world (does Batman think Robin is real or make-believe)? Here are the results:
While kids and adults are largely in agreement about reality/fantasy and fantasy/fantasy, believing that Batman is make-believe and Batman believes SpongeBob is make-believe, there is a difference in the within-world responses. Kids are more likely than adults to say that Batman believes Robin is also a fictional character. Even for children, significantly fewer give this response than in the other conditions, but nonetheless, this study does reveal a striking difference between children and adults.
But do kids really believe that Batman doesn’t think Robin is real? That would make life in Gotham City rather perplexing, don’t you think? Why would Batman be motivated to fight crime at all, if he truly believed that all his adversaries were fantasies?
There is another possible explanation of the data: that children simply have trouble taking Batman’s perspective. Their answers might simply reflect their own knowledge that Batman’s world is fictional.
To clear up this issue, Skolnick and Bloom devised a second study. This time, instead of directly asking what Batman and the other characters thought, the questions were phrased in terms of actions. So kids were asked, for example, “Can Batman see Robin?,” “Can Batman touch Robin?,” and “Can Batman talk to Robin?” Only then were they asked the explicit questions from Experiment 1: “Does Batman think that Robin is real?” Since the researchers already knew that adults could take the perspective of another, this experiment was conducted only with children. Here are the results:
Now the results for children are statistically indistinguishable from those of adults in the first study. So it appears that children even as young as four distinguish between different fantasy worlds in the same way as adults do. Batman doesn’t party with SpongeBob. Except on Halloween.
Skolnick, D., & Bloom, P. (2006). What does Batman think about SpongeBob? Children’s understanding of the fantasy/fantasy distinction. Cognition, 101, B9-B18.