"The Batman Effect"

Someone - I've now forgotten who; sorry - directed my attention to this article:

The Batman Effect

The gist of the study is that a child who thinks of himself as Batman, and stops periodically to ask himself "How is Batman doing?" will be able to persevere longer in a dull task than a child who approaches the job as himself.

(The article doesn't mention whether a control study was done in which the children were instructed to think of themselves as Batman, but were not given costumes. I'd be curious to see such a study -- I suspect the costumes are superfluous.)

Anyway, why does it work?

Is it because, as the article proposes, that when a child thinks of himself as Batman, he distances himself from the situation?

My first thought was that when a child sees himself as Batman, he identifies with a clearly defined character to emulate. The question "What would Batman do?" lies before him, and he probably envisions the answer vividly. He knows exactly what to do.

I keep coming back to the idea that children need bedtime stories, so that they will have heroes, for this reason.