Almost all of us have empathy: the only people who completely lack the ability are people with mental pathologies like narcissism and sociopathy. But even mentally-healthy people can vary in their levels of empathy, and now it seems there's one way to increase it: read more fiction.
Not any old fiction will do the trick, though: The study referenced in Scientific American tested literary fiction against "popular" fiction and nonfiction. Literary fiction was the clear winner: subjects who read books deemed "literary" did significantly better in tests measuring "their ability to infer and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions" than subjects who read popular fiction or nonfiction.
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The example SciAm gave of a literary book is Louise Erdrich's The Round House, which won the National Book Award last year. For popular fiction, test subjects read excerpts from authors like Danielle Steel. I think we can all agree that Erdrich and Steel are pretty clear examples of their type: there's no question the one is literary and the other is popular. Books like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game or Alice LePlante's Turn of Mind are blurrier: one is science fiction, the other is a mystery, and genre is usually considered popular fiction. But both of those books fit the "literary fiction" definition in other ways: they are intensely interested in character; in fact, each plot actively flows from character. They also bother with language, the rhythm and flow of words on a page. They are both quite dark and end (spoiler alert!) rather unhappily; popular fiction tends to favor tidy, happy endings.
So what I'm saying here is: don't get too hung up on categorization. If the book has nuanced characters whose minds you really get into, that's what counts.
Which brings us back to the point—why are these three styles of writing (literary, popular, and nonfiction) so different in their effect on empathy? From the SciAm article: "Popular fiction tends to portray situations that are otherworldly and follow a formula to take readers on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and exciting experiences. Although the settings and situations are grand, the characters are internally consistent and predictable, which tends to affirm the reader’s expectations of others. It stands to reason that popular fiction does not expand the capacity to empathize."
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| Walk a mile in her shoes: read a book |
The study is of particular interest to people who work with disadvantaged youth, who don't have the access to normal socialization that their more privileged counterparts enjoy. It's also of interest to people who work with prisoners and empathy-challenged people like those sociopaths mentioned above. If empathy can be improved, it makes sense to spend effort improving it. For the rest of us, it can also help, though: empathy can dismantle the in-group vs. out-group barriers that keep so many of us apart: whoever you consider "the other," whether that's Muslims, blacks, or gays, you are less likely to maintain fear and discomfort if you learn to empathize with that group. Read The Kite Runner and your perspective on Afghanistan and its people will be forever changed. Read Native Son and briefly take on the perspective of a black man in early 20th-century America. Read Madeline Miller's gorgeous Song of Achilles to imagine what it's like to be a male warrior falling on love with another man ... in ancient Greece. Other books can cross other divides: religion, nationality, gender, even time.
This is not to say there's anything wrong with reading or writing popular fiction. "There are likely benefits of reading popular fiction—certainly entertainment," says study author David Comer Kidd. "We just did not measure them." Rather than dismissing popular fiction, readers and writers of literary fiction can focus on what's right with their preferred style. In an interview with NPR, author Jesmyn Ward said she found the study's results inspirational. "If that's true, then that's exactly what I want to happen when I write," she said. "Part of the reason that I write about what I write about is that the people I grew up with, poor people and black people, are underrepresented in fiction. So it's amazing to me that a study like this shows that people are seeing these characters and can empathize with them and sympathize with them. It makes me feel like what I'm trying to do is working."
You can never go wrong with bringing more empathy into the world.
~Stephanie
I heard about this on NPR the other day.
ReplyDeleteMy husband's an English teacher at a CC and has had his students study Kite Runner.
Good to hear! What does he think of this study?
DeleteVery interesting. I can see this theory working for children and some adults, but I wonder if it has a "long term" effect. I mean, I tend to retain/remember a lot of the books I read (or films I watch--BTW,does this study apply to films too?) but I know a few people who quickly forget what they've read. I wonder what happens with their empathy then.
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised literary fiction works better for this. More often than not, these kinds of characters are better developed and seem real to us, whereas in more commercial work, a lot of characters seem more like archetypes, not individuals. Plus we don't spend a lot of time inside their minds. Having said this, a lot of literary characters I've read have been very negative, which makes it hard to emphasize with them. You understand them (or not) but don't necessarily like them.
I am hoping to get a copy of the full study with my scientist-hubby's help tomorrow, so I may be able to find out more. But one of the articles about it did say the effect of each "dose" of book was short-lived: boosting test results for only a few hours or up to a day. Probably like eating your vegetables, it's something you'd have to make a habit of. We get short-term benefits from each instance of brushing our teeth and exercising, too; we get long-term benefits from keeping those habits up. Is that a good analogy? I don't know, probably we'd need to study it more to find out. We do tend to get better at things we do repeatedly.
DeleteGood darn question about the dark characters. I think empathizing with someone is different than liking them, though. If an MC is truly someone you can't empathize with, I'd say the writer fell down on the job; that, or it could be just a bad fit between you and that character. Remembering last week's topic, I rarely come across an MC whose perspective I totally cannot get into. "The Dinner" had an unreliable, rather awful protagonist who demands a tenuous empathy only in the first few chapters. But that author was kinda pulling a Nabokov. That doesn't happen too often in fiction, even literary fiction.
Oh! And since you are finishing up Gone Girl, I was going to mention Gillian Flynn, especially as an example of a blurry line between literary and popular fiction. It's a thriller, but I thought the writing was pretty top-notch, and the character development was superb (if disturbingly so). But Flynn was actually one of the "popular fiction" excerpts given to test subjects, along with Danielle Steel! Isn't that odd? I found that odd. Why not give them something like Dan Brown? Or Fifty Shades. (Maybe they didn't want to traumatize subjects?)
DeleteI like how you use the analogy of the long term benefits if a person just keeps at it. It's been shown that it takes about six weeks for a person to form a new habit. Maybe learning to empathize with others through literature might take a little longer, but I can see how by just reading that empathy could form over time.
DeleteGone Girl is right there on the edge of popular vs literary fiction, isn't it. Interesting how I empathized with both main characters, depending on how I was being manipulated by the author.
DeleteHello Stephanie. Love you wrap up line: You can never go wrong with bringing more empathy into the world. Totally agree. I can see why literary fiction might create more empathy, but of course, that depends on the literary fiction. Some of that can be very dark and edgy, perhaps not the best for empathy-building. But I love to lose myself in books that are works of art, and would love to write like that too, but I write popular fiction.
ReplyDeleteDenise
Thanks, Denise! I think even the darkest and edgiest books can be empathy-building, depending on how they go about it. I mentioned the example of "The Good House" to Lorena under her excellent post last week about anti-heroines: the protagonist of that novel is a bitter, aging alcoholic who is destroying herself and the people around her. We were asked to take on her perspective, and I think the author made her accessible enough that most readers will be able to. "Water for Elephants" had a fairly bleak view of life in nursing homes, and I walked away feeling like I knew better what life inside nursing homes was like; I could imagine what it must be like to be old, to have your shining past be irrelevant to everyone but you, to be seen by your family as a burden. A book doesn't have to be uplifting to build empathy, and maybe the saddest stories are the ones we need to try hardest to understand.
Delete(Which isn't to say I don't love a good cuddly book with a pink cover sometimes!)
"reading fiction seems to increase empathy"
ReplyDeleteLove that! It seems so many people think reading is only good for your brain to build brain cells and nothing more. I think that's why the saying "At least they're reading!" exists. But I love it when other things are called to our attention, like the fact that we can learn to see things through another's eyes. I like your example of "Water for Elephants" because that's so true about the nursing home environment. I also agree with the literary aspect of drawing out a person's empathy. Genre fiction tends to follow the same formulas and it's nice to go off-roading with a character and really wonder what is going to happen with this person. And finding out that although it might be scary/sad/romantic/exciting it's fun to enjoy the ride and feel satisfied with what you've read.
I love the image of off-roading with a character!
DeleteAwesome, and so true. I mean, regardless of the genre or intent, you get inside someones else's head every time you pick up a book. How could you not help but see the world through a different lens? That said, there are some lenses I'd rather not EVER look through. Like the ones that leave black rings around your eyes, but that's another subject for another day.
ReplyDeleteAwesome post!
"Like the ones that leave black rings around your eyes"
DeleteToo true, Crystal! I can think of a few examples of books that drag you into the viewpoint of some monstrosity of a human. Not exactly pleasant reading.
We all need reminders that there's no us and them. It's all us. If literature can help with that, fantastic.
ReplyDeleteThe distinction between literary and popular fiction is interesting, perhaps even a bit troubling. There's definitely a difference in quality implied there - maybe appropriate but the conclusion is more informative. Character-driven narrative improves empathy, plot-driven narrative less so - feels less judgmental thinking of it in those terms.
I think many people find that distinction troubling. "The category of literary fiction has been contested on the grounds that it is merely a marker of social class, but features of the modern literary novel set it apart from most best-selling thrillers or romances," the study authors write. Literary fiction "unsettles reader's expectations," whereas genre fiction meets expectations — that's why you see the same formulas in (almost) every genre-fiction novel. Literary fiction also relishes in vagueness, not telling the reader how to interpret the narrative or the characters' motives. Popular fiction tends to be unsubtle. Literary fiction makes the reader work, popular fiction is "intended to entertain ... mostly passive readers." Those are some other differences, beyond character- vs. plot-driven.
DeleteI have no problem with the idea that bad writing exists. You are more likely to find it in popular (plot-driven) fiction, but it's not synonymous with popular fiction. Pop fiction can be very skillful. I can't do plotting very well, myself: I have great admiration for popular fiction's expert twisty-turny plotters like Gillian Flynn.
Back to the study: "In the absence of a clear means of quantifying literariness, the judgments of expert raters (i.e., literary prize jurors) were used. Accordingly, to study the effects of reading literary fiction, we selected literary works of fiction by award-winning or canonical writers and compared their effects on [empathy] with reading nonfiction, popular fiction, or nothing at all."
Which maybe helps? I dunno.
I hadn't heard of this study. It's very interesting and hopeful, especially because it suggests practical applications.
ReplyDelete