Becoming Batman

by E. Paul Zehr

  If you examined these brain scans (shown in Figure 9.1), you would be able to see that the supplementary motor cortex is active in the golf pro. In contrast, the novice golfers tended to show activity in many other parts of the brain, including those parts of the brain more active during motor learning (cognitive level of skill learning) and those related to emotion (the limbic system). In other words, novices used more brain areas than are needed to simply perform the golf shot. This means a greater chance of error and a greater possibility for interference and problems. Perhaps you remember that we thought of the cortex as the CEO and the basal ganglia and cerebellum as its advisors. When these parts of the brain are active, as was the case with the novice golfers, this means those “advisors” are trying too hard to speak with the cortex and change the output for movement. I would call this the difference between a “performance mind” and a “practice mind.”

  Let’s take a brief detour and look at how emotion affects motor control. Emotion and the limbic system belong to very ancient parts of our nervous systems. This part of the brain has very powerful effects on almost all other parts of the nervous system. Martial artists have long known about this, and Batman is certainly aware of this. In “Daughter of the Demon” (Batman #232, 1971), the nefarious R’as al Ghul is berating Batman for not showing enough emotion. In this story Robin and the bad guy’s daughter Talia have both been kidnapped and whisked away somewhere. R’as has enlisted Batman’s help to find his daughter. While they are developing a plan and trying to find Robin and Talia, Batman is shown reflecting on the situation in a very dispassionate way. He realizes how powerful and potentially dangerous it would be to let emotion carry him away. Batman finally replies and says “It won’t do me any good to allow my emotions to gain control . . . for years I’ve trained myself to concentrate on the thing at hand.” This is an excellent example of the “no mind” concept being extended to an overall detachment needed for cool decisions in combat and action planning.

  Figure 9.1. Brain imaging of expert (A) and not-so-expert (B) golfers shows less activity in the areas related to emotional (limbic) processing in the expert. Relative stages of Batman’s training are indicated for comparison. Courtesy Ana Solodkin, Steve L. Small, and John Milton.

  The bottom line is that when it comes to brain activity during movement, less is often more. As in more efficient and more skilled. You have probably noticed something like this but maybe just didn’t think of it quite this way. Golf is again a good example, but it could be any activity that involves targets and skilled performance. You may have been doing really well but then out of nowhere made a bad play. Now all of a sudden you began to think about every aspect of your movements including the basic way to do each part of the skill. This put you right back into the cognitive or associative stages of motor learning (see Figure 7.5).

  Recall that when we are learning motor skills, we move from the practice mind all the way to the automatic performance mind. We have all heard comments about golfers, tennis players, and other skilled athletes that they are “thinking too much about” what they are doing. When hitters are in a slump in baseball “overthinking things” is almost always invoked as an explanation of what has happened. It is interesting to reflect that this does not represent a hardwired shift in how the brain operates. Instead we can move back and forth between practice and performance, but to be effective we must be able to regulate this shift.

  Even the best and most highly skilled professional athletes, however, can be beaten by this interference. The example that I always think of is the 1996 British Open held at Carnoustie Golf Links in Angus, Scotland, and the way in which Jean van de Velde came apart on the final hole. After making a decision to use a driver off the eighteenth tee that produced a wayward shot, it was almost like his entire performance switched to “practice mind.” Then every shot he tried to make went awry. Even the decisions about what shots to make seemed clouded by something not related to calm cool performance. This is an example of the “too much mind” we discussed above for The Last Samurai. In the case of golf there will be another shot, another tournament, another chance. In the case of Batman and his exploits and for real-life police officers, firefighters, and soldiers, who face real and present dangers and must perform at a high level under stress, it may be fatal to make a mistake.

  Many years of training are needed to obtain the frame of mind of mushin no shin. Batman needed to practice movements and movement sequences until they could be performed unconsciously and arise almost spontaneously. This means that he needs to truly be in the automatic stage of motor learning that we talked about in Chapter 7. Remember that the state of no mind doesn’t mean mindless! In fact, in trying to describe these mental states, we can look to what the famous Zen master Takuan Soho once wrote in his book The Unfettered Mind:

  The mind must always be in the state of “flowing,” for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it means death. When the swordsman stands against his opponent, he is not to think of the opponent, nor of himself, nor of his enemy’s sword movements. He just stands there with his sword which, forgetful of all technique, is ready only to follow the dictates of the subconscious. The man has effaced himself as the wielder of the sword. When he strikes, it is not the man but the sword in the hand of the man’s subconscious that strikes.

  This mentality forms the heart of Batman’s performance in combat and of his approach to combat and other activities.

  Related to the concept of mushin is another martial arts “-shin”—zanshin. Zanshin basically means “remaining mind” and refers to the idea that awareness of danger or activity continues even after something has occurred. This is related to another concept called gan, which is an all-encompassing awareness of danger. In altercations, these concepts relate to maintaining awareness of the possible threat from an attacker at all times, even when he may appear to be subdued or to have given up.

  Good examples of the absence of the zanshin mind can be found in almost any “teen slasher” horror movie ever made. Invariably in these movies the good guy defeats some evil human or monster and then moves on and leaves the scene for happier times. However, rarely does the good guy actually check to see if the bad guy is really unconscious or fully defeated after the fight seems to be over. Instead, almost always from a considerable distance away, he or she just has a look and assumes everything is fine. It is maddening watching this unfold. Sometimes another of the good guy cast will arrive on the scene, inquire about what happened to the villain, and then be told that everything is fine and that the bad guy is defeated. Then the good guy is suddenly caught unawares a few minutes later by the rejuvenated bad guy and more fighting ensues. This kind of thing does, admittedly, make for a dramatic finale to a movie. But allowing this to happen wouldn’t be OK for Batman or other crimefighters, real or fictional.

  Dorothy, We’re Not in the Batcave Anymore

  Batman is hardly ever active in what could be called a “controlled environment.” Most of Batman’s activities actually take place in what I would call an “out of control” environment. Total chaos—like that we saw at the opera earlier in the chapter—is often going on all around, and Batman is in the midst of it trying to defend himself, save the innocents, and take out the bad guys all without seriously injuring anyone. He can do all his training and practice in a regulated environment, but when he is called into action to battle the worst that Gotham City has to offer, he has to deal with whatever conditions are at hand. Batman is typically fighting in unstable environments that are similar to military, paramilitary, or police combat scenarios. This is where the concept of stress again makes an appearance. We have discussed stress in many different guises throughout the book. Now I want you to look at it in its most familiar form, one that you or I might look at and say “that situation is very stressful.” For me, it would be most of Batman’s battles!

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bsp; What is known about the kind of stressful environment or situations we want to consider here? Features of high stress include sudden and unexpected events that demand immediate responses. These usually involve high time pressure, noise, heat, smoke, darkness, and other stressors. Also, and here is often the most important factor, a high-stress situation usually is one in which failure to perform properly will result in immediate and extreme negative consequences. Over top of all of this, a key feature of combat-related scenarios is that extreme threat is present. In military speak this means a “kill or be killed” level of stress. When all these are lumped together, even ordinary and routine procedures can be difficult to perform. Mistakes—often with dire consequences—can occur.

  How all this stress can affect performance has been explored by Driskell and colleagues in military analysis of the tragic accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane during the Iran-Iraq war. On July 3, 1988, the United States naval warship USS Vincennes was patrolling in the Persian Gulf. At mid-morning Iran Air Flight 655 took off with a flight plan that, after seven minutes of flying, put it directly over the USS Vincennes. The Iran passenger jet had left from an airport that had combined civilian and military activity. This plane was mistakenly identified as an Iranian F-14 fighter jet and was shot down by the Vincennes, killing all 290 passengers and crew.

  It seems unfathomable that this could really have happened, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t it be a relatively easy task to identify aircraft appropriately and to take appropriate action (or not take action in this case)? Well, I think the answer would surely be “yes” if the environment in which all this occurred was calm, controlled, and predictable. However, we need to consider this situation more closely. We need to think about whether the Iranian plane could have appeared as a threat to the Vincennes, the actual time available to decide what to do, and whatever else may have been happening at the time the plane was identified.

  As it turns out the USS Vincennes was not just sitting peacefully at rest in the Persian Gulf. Instead, this was during wartime, and the ship was constantly under threat from Iranian F-14s. In fact, fighter jets often took off from the same airport as the doomed Iran Air flight and during the month before this tragedy, ships of the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf had issued more than a hundred challenges to threatening aircraft. So, the jetliner could easily have been interpreted as a threat.

  Time pressure was also high. There were only about three minutes between the time that the Iran Air flight first became a potential threat and the time it was shot down. So, not much time was available to ponder a course of action. Also, while all this was going on and the Iran Air flight was in the air, the Vincennes was engaged in a surface-to-surface battle with an Iranian naval ship. This meant that the USS Vincennes was maneuvering at high speed, firing its guns, all while being fired upon. The crew was therefore operating in an extreme, high-noise environment with changing lighting conditions on a ship pitching on the ocean surface.

  So, what we are really discussing here is an emergency situation of extreme acute stress. Clearly, the conclusion that the Iran Air flight was an F-14 that was about to attack the USS Vincennes was not correct. The main point of discussing this example was to make clear just how much human performance and judgment degrade when in an extremely stressful environment.

  We can transfer the general principles that emerged from the tragic naval incident to Batman’s activities of fighting criminals. This means considering Batman’s arousal level related to the level of stress. In psychology this has been described as the “inverted U” (shown in Figure 9.2), which depicts an optimal level of arousal due to stress that allows for the best performance. Remember no stress is bad. You need some stress to have enough arousal to perform. However, adding more stress to further increase arousal leads to a decrease in performance. So, Batman’s performance will increase while his arousal level increases up to the top of the inverted U. Beyond this point, his performance will decrease. This has drastic implications for things like defeating criminals. Also, different activities have different places on the inverted U. The arousal level needed for maximum performance in golf is much lower than for maximum performance as an NFL running back. Also, different athletes respond differently to stress, and how they respond can change with training.

  This idea of training can also be seen in the progression from Bruce to The Bat-Man to the finished Batman, shown in panel B of Figure 9.2. The beginner Bruce can only tolerate a very small stress level and a modest arousal to perform well. At the far right, the fully trained Batman has a better performance at much higher stress levels.

  Part of the big problem of performance under conditions of extreme stress is related to something termed “perceptual narrowing.” This term refers pretty much to what you probably guess—the more stressed you are, the less you will be able to pay attention. This phenomenon also occurs when we learn movement skills because we focus exclusively on certain elements. (Remember that when Bruce was first learning his kick in Chapter 7, he had to think about every step, but as Batman he no longer had to be aware of every aspect.) When things are narrowed this means that there simply isn’t room for handling many different activities in the environment. With reference to the inverted U, when you are highly aroused—and beyond the maximum point—perceptual narrowing occurs while performance drops way off. This means that you have difficulty paying attention to and evaluating the importance of all the information in the environment. In this way you can miss some important things.

  Have you ever wondered why a player in a team sport like basketball can miss an obvious pass that he or she should have been able to throw directly to a defender? Perceptual narrowing was occurring. This tends to happen when there are many players moving quickly and converging on the player who makes the mistake.

  Baseball players and managers intuitively know this (but may not call it perceptual narrowing or stress) when they encourage their players to always run as hard as possible down to first base after a ball has been hit. Even if it looks like a routine out, if the third baseman thinks that there is a chance that the runner may actually make it safely to first base, he may be distracted enough to not notice the ball take a slightly funny hop as he goes to pick it up. Then, because of the odd hop, the ball isn’t exactly in his glove right where he expects it, and he doesn’t grab it cleanly. All of a sudden his routine throw for the automatic out at first base goes too high, pulling the first baseman up and off the base, and the runner is safe. And it all happened because of the stress put on the third baseman by the actions of the runner.

  Figure 9.2. Inverted U relationship between arousal and performance for Batman. A: We can see that Batman’s performance increases as his arousal level rises up to the maximum point shown at the top of the inverted U. Beyond this point, his performance will decrease. B: The progression from Bruce to The Bat-Man to the finished Batman. Beginner Bruce (far left) can tolerate only a small stress level and a modest arousal to perform well. In contrast, fully trained Batman (far right) has a better performance at much higher stress levels.

  When you are under stress, perceptual narrowing can reduce acuity in peripheral vision. That means you really cannot attend to other factors because you cannot actually perceive them at all! In fact this really forms a kind of selective attention, wherein we don’t always pay attention to the right things.

  There are also many examples in sports where the exact opposite occurs. Some players seem unflappable and impervious to pressure. They don’t seem to succumb to this problem of perceptual narrowing. Two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash seems to be able to make passes to teammates who are just exactly where they ought to be to receive the pass, despite the fact that it should be almost impossible for him to see where they are. He seems almost to know where they will be and to able to see the whole court. One of my favorite athletes, former NHL player Wayne Gretzky, always appeared as if he could see all parts of the ice surface and knew not just where everyone was but where they would be
at just the right moment to receive his passes. In these cases it is almost like the game slows down for the players.

  Can a person train to do this, though? Many people can have the skill to do the physical performance needed but not everyone has the “grace under pressure” to perform calmly when needed. Let’s consider what police and paramilitary forces use more and more these days to get at full-on live-fire situations in training. They use what is called “reality-based training.” In very basic terms the main point of reality-based training is to incorporate training and responses in environments that can be very chaotic and that mimic the kind of stressors that a police officer might experience during a real encounter.

  This is how we imagine Batman being trained and operating. His training, including the use of reality-based activity, would have allowed him to see the whole environment and would have made him largely immune to the stress of combat. Because of this, he can deal with all adversaries without problems and remain completely in control. The combat scenes in the movie Batman Begins are filmed with this idea very much at the fore. Another great example of this is found in a story called “Citizen Wayne,” taken from the 1992 graphic novel Blind Justice. Here Bruce is undergoing some ninja-like training by Henri Ducard and is shown passing his test of defeating multiple attackers in an utterly chaotic environment. In the aftermath of his success, Ducard says to Bruce, “Excellent. Four attackers disabled, with no loss of life.” So, not only was Batman able to skillfully work through and subdue four attackers in utter chaos, but he did so without killing any of them. This is a big part of becoming Batman. That is, being able to fight against those set upon trying to kill him while not dealing out mortal injury. And that brings us to the last part of this chapter. Is it really possible to become Batman and not use lethal force?