This recent study seems to show that reading fiction is strongly correlated with high levels of empathy, social understanding, and awareness. On the other hand, there is no similar connection between social skills and reading nonfiction.
Of course, as the authors point out, it is not clear which way the causation goes. It may well be that highly empathetic people tend to read more fiction, not that reading fiction makes you more empathetic. Personally, I hope that it's the latter effect that dominates; I need to justify my reading habits!
A related question: What about the the correlation between social skills and the ratio of fiction books read relative to nonfiction? For example, I probably read much more fiction than the average person, but I also read far more nonfiction than fiction. Does the ratio of fiction to nonfiction say more about my empathy or lack thereof, or is it the absolute amount of fiction read that is decisive?
I look at fiction as a counter to non-fiction, which, by necessity, many of us here have to read for a living. And, so, I don't think that it is likely to be the ratio that is important, but rather, the amount of fiction read that is more important. However, at the low end of the curve, where the people are reading little of either fiction or non-fiction, any conclusions from the study are likely to be inapplicable.
On the other hand, what does the study have to say about people who like reading good fiction, but recognize that most of it these days -- even more than accounted for by Sturgeon's Revelation -- is utterly formulaic worthless drivel?
Yet my wife tells me all the time I do not have a lot of empathy for people. I say well I have empathy for people who could not help their state of affairs. But I have no empathy for people like her uncle who has a college degree and has not worked in a job for over a decade.
Hell, I do not even have empathy for our current situation. 2002-2003 I went without a job for 4 months. We muddled along balancing bills for 2 years before finally filing bankruptcy last December. We filed a chapter 13 so we are paying everyone back there was no way I could do a chapter 7. After all, it was our fault for not managing our money better.
But I love good fiction, my favorite book is "To kill a Mockingbird". I read that book in high school and read it every couple of years. Does that make me a Democrat, ha, don't bet on it. Of course, when I was younger, 70's and early 80's, seemed to me the southern democrats were all racists.
Anyway, love to read and probably read 500 "utterly formulaic worthless drivel" in my 3 years in the Army. But I am as conservative as they come.
In the meantime, too many questions:
Do other forms of media correlate as well? Are people who watch "Scrubs" or "Desperate Housewives" more empathic than people who watch C-SPAN or base ball (my vices)? If not, why not?
What about people who read lots of fiction, but THINK they're reading non-fiction (Dan Brown, Bob Woodward, anything on the Kennedys, etc.)
And what about those of use who have no empathy for people who watch fictional TV shows?
Finally, does political science count as fiction?
Questions, questions, questions . . .
Likewise, in non-fiction, it's impossible to truly get inside the head of characters who don't actually let you in - in fiction, everyone's an imitation of a human (or some other species) whose thoughts and feelings are manufactured by the author.
I know some people will insist that I'm making it sound worse than it really is, but is it really a good idea to be sympathising with things that don't exist? The extent that the fictional characters' conditions mirror real-life conditions can't consistently exceed the author's grasp of reality, so it seems like time would be better spent meeting genuine humans and sympathising with them.
Of course, that could easily be just me. I can get lost in well-crafted fiction at the drop of a hat, so perhaps people with better time-management and more robust personal lives can do better.
I didn't watch any tv for quite a few years when I was younger and during that time had a higher social anxiety disorder and disconnection from reality. When I rediscovered television it was a breakthrough socially and I was much more able to shake off hard-left conspiracy theory (of course non-fiction was at least as important as fiction for this).
Are those who read military fiction more empathetic than those who read non-fiction attacks on the religious right theocracy recently imposed on America?
I wonder?
She often asks "why would fictional character x say that?" ... whereas I can only think about why a scriptwriter might choose to write a script that way.
One marker of good fiction would seem to be the extent to which you can think of the characters as real people.
Niche readers may also have poorer social skills than mainstream readers (just a guess), and the survey would classify them as non-readers, thus finding a correlation where none exists.
Notice that Bob Woodward, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, and Norman Mailer are all on the non-fiction list.
I would think that the causation goes the other way as far as an empathy-fiction link goes. People who lack empathy should find fiction to be odd and confusing. Them not reading fiction is like me not reading quantum mechanics -- it's not very interesting if it's imcomprehensible.
I'm not sure niche readers would be as much of a problem as you think. They did list authors from several genres (romance, sci-fi, etc.); and respondents were asked not if they had read the authors, but if they had heard of them. I, for one, recognized most of the names in every fiction category except romance, but had only read three or four. The idea, as the authors explain (apparently this method is not new to their study) is that readers of pre-1950 sci-fi will still be more likely to have heard the name Robert Jordan than others, because they'll have seen it while shopping at the bookstore, had it recommended to them by friends, etc.
On the other hand, I think the fact that they use exclusively modern fiction (and non-fiction) might be more of a problem: it seems plausible that someone could read Apuleius and Trollope constantly without ever wandering into the part of the bookstore where Danielle Steele is kept.
I'm hoping she won't kill off any of the Weasleys either.
Presuming that's true, lesser lights could provide lesser but still valid illumination.
Fiction allows the reader to put us into the mind of the characters, which is in no other way allowed us, unless we're a pshrink who puts sodium pentothal into the coffee.
If the writer is good, and has a reasonable understanding of human nature, this would be like reading somebody else's accumulated experience which would be a useful addition to our own experience.
And, even if we don't understand some characters, the author is introducing us to new and unfamiliar human territory, also a valuable experience.
But, as always, which comes first? Do you read fiction because empathy makes it easy or enjoyable? Or does reading fiction punch up your empathy?
Oy, such "non-fiction" works should definitely be on the Fantasy shelf.
Re Houston Lawyer: Filthy mudbloods. Never figured out why we prefer muggles being herded about like cattle to them being openly oppressed.
You mean like a (non-fiction) memoir?
Possibly, but we can't trust the non-fiction memoir to be truthful or complete. The writer of fiction can say whatever he wants, make his character to and be whatever he wants, face whatever situation he wants the character to face.
In real life, the intersection of a particular type and a particular situation may be rare, and the likelihood that person would write a memoir is, of course, vanishingly small.
Fiction is not restricted by such quibbles, and the apparent reality of the insights is the only important thing.
Both are just one person's account of reality in the end. Both provide insights -- as often about the writer as the subject.
A. 'Cause it's not true
I'd add that the study doesn't indicate how the authors in either category were selected, but from the look of the list I'd hazard a guess that one of the authors went into a bookstore in a college town and picked writers' names from the face-out titles in the relevant sections.
I bring this up because we have the "B causes A" hypothesis on the table along with the "A causes B" one. But maybe C causes both, although in this case we'd need a C1 (innate sex differences) and a C2 (socialization) to get the full picture.
But without any attempt at irony: I read a lot of Evelyn Waugh. I can't tell how this would increase my sympathy for my fellow man. He could be hugely nasty. (or 'nasty, brutish, and short,' as one wag put it.)
I also love to read Wodehouse. Perhaps this had made me more sypathetic to twits. I'm not sure.
I don't think empathy means you can't enjoy stories about nasty characters, or even stories about twits. The question is whether you see the human element in the nasties and the dingbats. I can usually tell where Waugh and Wodehouse characters are coming from, and I sometimes wonder if I would act the same way in suitably contrived circumstances. I even wish I had the chance to see if I'd make a good Bertie Wooster (but then, who doesn't)?
If people tend to exaggerate how much they read, then how did the prior research referred to discover how much people actually read? And, if it had discovered it, then why did Mar and his colleagues have to use their "long list" technique?
A difference between the normal use of this system (for which it evolved) and reading fiction is that the input is of a different kind - words on a page instead of observed muscle movements. This paper by Marco Tettamanti et al. suggests that action words can activate motor circuits, so the link between fiction, imagining, movement, and meaning, is seen at least in outline. Perhaps this is why we speak of a story being "moving." Speculative, I know, but possibly of interest in the present contex.