The Invisibilia podcast aired an episode titled “How to Become Batman.”23 In this episode, scientists took similarly performing rats, but told human handlers, “This rat is slow” and then ran it through a race. The rat in question then underperformed. The rats that humans were told were stellar, ran faster. It turns out that the small ways that the humans were handling these rats changed based on these preconceived notions of them. And it actually affected the rats’ self-confidence!
