What Happens When Researchers Give People Superpowers?
Do they use them to do good or evil? In most superhero origin stories, there's the moment of doubt: How will Peter Parker use his radioactive-spider powers? Invariably, the heroes use them to help others. Turns out, that's pretty close to what happens in real life (or at least in the lab): When Stanford researchers endowed people with the power of flight in virtual reality, the subjects became more altruistic back in real reality. This was the experiment's setup: Researchers had 30 men and 30 women strap on a pair of a virtual reality goggles. Then one by one, the subjects entered a simulator--a room researchers could manipulate with speakers to make an imagined situation more life-like. In the simulation, all of the subjects were sent to a city, and a woman's voice announced that their mission was to find a diabetic child and deliver an insulin injection to him. One...