PASSAGE THREE

(1)Reading award-winning literature may boost your ability to read other people, anew study suggests. Researchers at the New School for Social Research, in NewYork City, found that when they had volunteers read works of acclaimed“literary fiction",it seemed to temporarily improve their ability tointerpret other people’s emotions. The same was not true of nonfiction or“popular” fiction, the mystery, romance and science-fiction books that oftendominate bestseller lists.

(2)Experts said the findings, reported online in Science, suggest that literaturemight help people to be more perceptive and engaged in their lives.

(3)"Readingliterary fiction isn't just for passing the time. It's not just an escape,”said Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at theUniversity of Toronto. It also enables us to better understand others, and thentake that into our daily lives.

(4)Oatley was not involved in the new research, but worked on some of the firststudies to suggest that reading literature can boost people's empathy forothers. His team has found that those who read a lot of fiction tend to showgreater empathy on standard tests, but the same is not true of avid nonfictionfans.

 

(5)But, the study by Oatley and his team cannot prove that literature boostsempathy — empathetic folks may just be drawn to reading fiction, whereas thenew study does offer some“cause-and-effect" evidence, Oatley said. For thestudy, researchers set up a series of five experiments in which participantsread either literary fiction, popular fiction, nonfiction or nothing at allbefore taking some standard tests. One of the tests is known as “Reading theMind in the Eyes”. People have to look at photos of actors' eyes, and then guesswhat emotion is being expressed in each. The test is considered a measure ofempathy. Overall, study participants fared better on on the test after readingliterary fiction,versus the other three conditions.

(6)It was a small improvement,according to the principal researcher David ComerKidd, “It's not like taking people from a (grade)‘C" to an 'A',” he said.But, Kidd added, the effect was seen after only about 10 minutes' reading, andit was a statistically strong finding, meaning it's unlikely to have been dueto chance.

(7)“Literary”fiction has no hard-and-fast definition. So Kidd and his colleagues chosecontemporary works that have won or been finalists for outstanding literaryawards. They included“The Round House”,by Louise Erdrich,“Salvage the Bones”,by Jesmyn Ward and the short story“Corrie” by Alice Munro. And “popular"fiction included best-sellers like"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn, andDanielle Steel's “The Sins of the Mother".

(8)What's so special about literary fiction? “For one, it's usually more focusedon characters than on plot,” Kidd noted. But beyond that, he said, there isusually no single “authoritative narrator” who takes us through the story.“ Itdemands that the reader almost become a writer and fill in the gaps. You reallyhave to think about the characters,” Kidd said.

(9)Oatley agreed."Alice Munro doesn't tell you what to think,” he said. “You,yourself, have to make inferences about characters.And that's often what we'redoing in our real-life conversations.” Or at least that's what people could do.

(10)Reading literary fiction could also offer a way to "practice” your socialskills and use them more in real life, according to another researcher notinvolved in the study. “It's like how pilots train in a flight simulator,"said Raymond Mar, an associate professor of psychology at York University, inToronto, who has collaborated with Oatley. “This is a great study;” Mar said ofthe new study. But he added that the overall research in this area is “still inits infancy" and one key question is whether literary fiction really isbetter than other fiction.

(11)Mar and his colleagues recently found that fans of romance novels tended to dobest on tests of empathy. Unlike the current study, Mar's study did not testpeople after having them read different types of fiction. So it's possible thatthere is something else about romance-novel readers that makes them moreunderstanding of others.

(12)Still,according to Mar, it's too early to tell people to trade in theirDanielle Steel for Alice Munro, at least if the goal is boosting empathy.

(13)It's also possible that plays, movies or even TV shows could build your empathymuscles, according to Kidd. But reading may be special, he said, because itprovides no visuals and you have to engage your imagination more.

(14)Everyone agreed that the findings suggest literature is important beyondentertainment or improving vocabulary. “There's a common belief that readingliterature is frivolous, or not practical,” Mar said. “But there's a growingbody of evidence that it's important in skills that we need in our lives.”