Another reason to keep reading the fiction I love

For class this week, we were assigned to read an article regarding fiction and the psychological benefits it might have (Oatley, 2008). As someone who thrives on reading fiction--and loyally collects all published works of three authors as they are released in paperback--I found this study to be particularly interesting. Oatley (2008) and some of his colleagues performed a study in which they examined the short- and long-term effects that reading fiction can have on a person.

To gauge the effects of long-term fiction reading, they used objective assessments with author's and non-author's name to determine how much the participants read. Once that was established, the participants were given "mind-in-the-eyes" tests in which they looked at pictures of people's eyes and tried to determine the emotion the person in the photo was feeling. Lastly, participants were asked to view 15 short video clips depicting various social interactions; participants then had to describe what was going on in the clip (Oatley, 2008). The results? "Fiction readers had substantially greater empathy as measured by the mind-in-the-eyes test, and also performed somewhat better on the interpersonal perception test than people who read predominantly non-fiction" (Oatley, 2008). So what this study turned up was that fiction could quite possibly be teaching readers what it means to be human, at least in terms of emotions and and how we interact with others.

They followed this up with another study to rule out the possibility that fiction attracts more empathic people, which would have skewed the results because they would be scoring high in empathy. Another group of participants were given a piece to read, either a fiction short story or a non-fiction essay of the same length. The participants were then given a social reasoning test and an analytical reasoning test. The social reasoning test asked multiple-choice questions regarding the beliefs, emotions, and intentions of characters in different situations. Again, those who read the fiction piece tested higher on the social reasoning test than the participants who read the non-fiction piece. There was no difference in analytical reasoning between the two groups (Oatley, 2008). So once again, we have some evidence that points to fiction developing social skills and empathy in its readers. And in the case with this particular study, the effect is immediate (Oatley, 2008). Not only does fiction help develop empathy in us, but it starts to do so right away.

I find this interesting, especially when considering the major protest against including "popular literature" during the 19th century when the purpose and intent of the American public library was in a state of evolution. Now, over 100 years later, we find that popular literature--fiction--plays a role in the psychological development of its readers. How ironic. That which was initially thought of as useless and without educational purpose has now been determined to have a psychological purpose. Maybe fiction won't necessarily teach us facts about science or mathematics, but it can teach us about cultures and the myriad of ways in which we interact with and respond to others on many levels.

So don't put down put down your Nora Roberts, Anne McCaffrey, or Dan Brown. Read on!

Updated 10/25/10: I neglected to include the bibliographic information for Oatley's article. Let me rectify that now:
Oatley, K. (2008). The science of fiction: A good novel is far more than mere entertainment. New Scientist 198(June 28, 2008) 42-43. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(08)61619-X