Everyone knows that reading is beneficial. It makes sense that reading more makes reading easier. Exposure to new words increases our vocabulary. Learning new concepts makes us, yes, smarter. You get the point. Nonfiction is usually the preferred educational genre because it is based on fact, but what I found interesting is the emotional and intellectual benefits of fiction. Reading fiction can actually affect our ability to feel empathy. Research has shown that knowledge presented through fiction has a greater impact on us because of our emotional involvement (Bal and Veltkamp 2013).
First I think it’s important to clarify what exactly empathy is. Empathy is when we actually adopt someone else’s mental perspective using imagination *insert SpongeBob rainbow*. We use our mind to model someone else’s thought process in a given situation. Empathy isn’t just when we understand or feel the same emotions as someone else; it’s when we come to experience those same emotions through our own thought process (Coplan 2004). Sound familiar?
Now consider how we read fiction. When you’re reading, you’re simulating the mental process of a character in your mind. If the writing is good, you’re sad when bad things happen and happy when good things happen, but you reach this emotional state using your own mental process. So reading fiction is basically empathy practice. Once you get used to adopting the perspective of different characters, it becomes easier to adopt the perspective of people in real life. Of course, the actual process is more complicated than this (Bal and Veltkamp 2013).
Two studies done by P. Matthijs Bal and Martijn Veltkamp and published in 2013 showed that reading fiction doesn’t always significantly affect empathy. It also doesn’t always increase empathy. The “sleeper effect” is necessary for reading to have an impact on someone’s emotional state. The sleeper effect describes when a person is so involved in a story that they integrate the message into their internal archive of knowledge without consciously realizing it. In order for the sleeper effect to fully impact a person, they must also spend time not reading, where they can associate knowledge from fiction to the real world (Bal and Veltkamp 2013). This is extremely important because it’s when a person starts practicing empathy in reality. I’ve definitely experienced this. Sometimes I’ll really connect with a character, and later I’ll start to recognize parts of them in the people I meet or already know. I love it when this happens because it makes my life feel more like one of my adventures.
The sleeper effect is also what causes us to remember things from fiction for so long. Once we start associating facts with emotional states, the memory becomes more permanent. This is great…. as long as the facts are accurate. In 2003 Marsh provided evidence that readers exposed to false facts in fiction used those facts on a knowledge test given to them a week after reading the story (Marsh et al. 2000). Moral of the story, what you read matters!
Perhaps the most interesting thing I found is that reading fiction can also decrease our capacity for empathy. While becoming emotionally invested in a story helps us practice empathy, when we do not connect with a story we instead dissociate. This can happen when we read a poorly written book or just don’t connect with the characters. In their second study, P. Matthijs Bal and Martijn Veltkamp showed that people who were not “transported” into the story had a decrease of empathy over time. So while becoming involved in a story helps us practice empathy, reading a story we don’t enjoy and are not involved in helps us practice distancing ourselves from the feelings of others (Bal and Veltkamp 2013). Once again, what you read matters! Overall I really enjoyed researching the benefits of reading fiction. I prefer it over nonfiction and like to see that it’s just as beneficial. It was very interesting to read about the sleeper effect, and how incorrect facts can get stuck in our head. It’s unrealistic to read factually accurate fiction all the time, so I guess nonfiction can help with that. The fact that really surprised me is that reading fiction can also have negative impacts on our empathy. I used to force myself to finish books I hated, but there’s no point in that. Now go read some books you enjoy.
Works Cited
[1] Bal, P. Matthijs, and Martijn Veltkamp. “How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation.” PLoS ONE 8, no. 1 (2013). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0055341.
[2] Coplan, Amy. “Empathic Engagement with Narrative Fictions.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62, no. 2 (2004): 141-52. doi:10.1111/j.1540-594x.2004.00147.x.
[3] Marsh, Elizabeth J., Michelle L. Meade, and Henry L. Roediger. “Learning Facts From Fiction.” PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000. doi:10.1037/e501882009-042.
Isabel
Peyton