The effect of fiction

Research looks at how reading fiction impacts you.

Do you feel guilty about reading that novel you have next to your bed? Do you think that you really should be reading a biography or a non-fiction tome that will reveal to you the “real world”? Well, you can let that guilt go right now because a new review supports the idea that reading fiction enhances some fundamental human qualities.

The new review examined studies that look at how reading fiction affects us. In one study for instance MRI was used to measure brain activity while the subjects were asked to think of phrases such as “a dark blue carpet” or “an orange striped pencil”. As few as three phrases like this were able to increase activation in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory. So even the most simple description of a scene will be enough to stimulate the brain and enhance imagination.

Other studies suggest a perhaps even more powerful effect of fiction.

In one study subjects were asked to look at 36 photographs of people’s eyes and to choose from among four terms what they thought the person belonging to the eyes was thinking or feeling. The actual thoughts and feelings of the owners of the eyes had already been recorded. The results showed that people who were fiction readers did significantly better at interpreting the eyes than did readers of non-fiction. This was true even when personality and individual differences were controlled for.

The ability of fiction to boost empathy has also been shown in other studies.

One study showed that narratives can generate empathy for a race or culture. In the study people who read a story about the experiences of a Moslem woman in New York (“Saffron Dreams” by Shaila Abdullah) had a reduced bias in the perception of Arab and Caucasian faces compared to a group who had read a non-narrative passage.

Hmmm, boosting imagination and empathy…what political figure could do with reading a bit of good quality fiction?

Source: Trends in Cognitive Science