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Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes

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Readers of fiction tend to have better abilities of empathy and theory of mind (Mar et al., 2006). We present a study designed to replicate this finding, rule out one possible explanation, and extend the assessment of social outcomes. In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled for, along with two other important individual differences: the tendency to be drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting for these variables, fiction exposure still predicted performance on an empathy task. Extending these results, we also found that exposure to fiction was positively correlated with social support. Exposure to nonfiction, in contrast, was associated with loneliness, and negatively related to social support.
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Exploring the link between reading fiction
and empathy: Ruling out individual differences
and examining outcomes
RAYMOND A. MAR, KEITH OATLEY and JORDAN B. PETERSON
E-mails: mar@yorku.ca; keith.oatley@utoronto.ca; jordanbpeterson@yahoo.com.
Abstract
Readers of fiction tend to have better abilities of empathy and theory of
mind (Mar et al., 2006). We present a study designed to replicate this
finding, rule out one possible explanation, and extend the assessment of
social outcomes. In order to rule out the role of personality, we first iden-
tified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statis-
tically controlled for, along with two other important individual differences:
the tendency to be drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting
for these variables, fiction exposure still predicted performance on an em-
pathy task. Extending these results, we also found that exposure to fiction
was positively correlated with social support. Exposure to nonfiction, in
contrast, was associated with loneliness, and negatively related to social
support.
Keywords: empathy, reading, narrative, depression, big five personality,
social support
Introduction
We spend an enormous amount of our leisure time engaged with fictional
narratives. Our free time revolves around fictional stories, whether it be
the morning comic strip, the novel we read on the subway on the way
to work, the television show we watch after dinner, or the book that
waits for us on our nightstand. Despite the prominent role that these
experiences play in our lives surprisingly little psychological research has
been devoted to this topic. The necessity of mending this situation, how-
ever, is gradually gaining attention (Miall, 2000; Mar and Oatley, 2008).
Our engagement with fictional narratives is interesting not just for the
prominent place these stories appear to have in our lives, but also be-
cause the experience we undergo while engaging with them is unique.
When reading a novel or watching a film we become immersed in the
world presented to us (Nell, 1988), transported to new places with new
people (Gerrig, 1993). In these narrative worlds we experience a simu-
Communications 34 (2009), 407428 03412059/2009/0340407
DOI 10.1515/COMM.2009.025 Walter de Gruyter
408 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
lated reality and feel real emotions in response to the conflicts and rela-
tionships of story characters (Oatley, 1994). Stories thus appear to offer
us a deeply-felt simulation of social experience (Oatley, 1999) that may
hold real consequences for our actual social world (Mar and Oatley,
2008; Mar, Oatley, and Djikic, 2008). Specifically, engaging with narra-
tive fiction and mentally simulating the social experiences represented
may improve or maintain social skills, especially skills of empathy and
social understanding. Consistent with this idea, our group has shown
that frequent readers of narrative fiction perform better on two different
empathy tasks, whereas frequent readers of expository non-fiction per-
form worse (Mar et al., 2006).
There are, of course, several possible explanations for this observed
relation between reading fiction and empathy (Mar et al., 2006). While
reading fiction, the simulation of social experience that occurs might
engage the same social-cognitive processes employed during real-world
social comprehension (e. g., mental inference, tracking of goals, emotion
recognition). Repeated simulation of this kind, then, could lead to a
honing of these social and empathic processes, which in turn could be
applied to other contexts outside of reading. Another possibility is that
readers of fiction learn concrete social information from books, acquir-
ing knowledge about human psychology. In contrast with the first pro-
posal, here we make a content versus process distinction. Lastly, the
relation between fiction and empathy might be explained by individual
differences. That is, certain traits may predict greater enjoyment of fic-
tion, and also better empathic accuracy. This last hypothesis seems to be
the least interesting possible explanation, and it is this explanation that
we seek to rule out in the current study.
The somewhat surprising nature of our finding that reading fiction
predicts empathic accuracy, and the fact that it is based on correlation,
necessitates a more detailed investigation of this effect. First, the pos-
sibility that individual differences can account for the association be-
tween exposure to narrative fiction and empathy needs to be ruled out.
Second, examining the potential real-world social correlates of narrative
fiction is necessary if we are to increase our confidence that the validity
of this relation extends beyond our original measures.
Individual differences
Our previous study demonstrated that exposure to narrative fiction was
linearly and positively related to social ability, after controlling for age,
experience with English, general intelligence (g) and exposure to exposi-
tory nonfiction. However, there are several other potential individual
Fiction and empathy 409
difference variables that need to be ruled out before pursuing the pos-
sibility of a causal association. Key among these is trait personality.
The Big Five Model is the most widely used and extensively validated
model of personality. It is composed of Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (reversed, Emotional Stability), and
Openness to experience (Costa and Macrae, 1992; John and Srivastava,
1999). Recent publications have highlighted the importance of demon-
strating discriminant validity with respect to these personality dimen-
sions. There is growing evidence, for example, that the Emotional Intelli-
gence construct, clearly related to social ability, can be largely accounted
for by measures of trait Agreeableness, in conjunction with gender and
g(corrected multiple r.81, Schulte, Ree, and Carretta, 2004; see also
Nettelbeck, Bastian, and Burns, 2007). Demonstrating that Emotional
Intelligence can achieve incremental validity beyond personality and
cognitive ability has thus become a fundamental issue for those inter-
ested in this construct (e. g., Petrides, Pe
´rez-Gonza
´lez, and Furnham,
2007). As another example, Locus of Control, Self-esteem, and Self-effi-
cacy may all represent the same core construct: trait Neuroticism (Judge,
Erez, Bono, and Thoresen, 2002; cf. Mar, DeYoung, Higgins, and Pe-
terson, 2006). Thus, it appears increasingly necessary to ensure (1) that
hypothetical variables are not merely variants of known personality
traits, regardless of their name and (2) to demonstrate that identified
relationships between such variables cannot be attributed to well-estab-
lished measures of personality. In the context of the current study, it is
important to demonstrate that our measure of exposure to narrative
fiction isn’t simply tapping some other individual difference variable.
With regard to the observed relation between fiction exposure and
empathy, a number of Big Five traits could theoretically account for this
association. Extraversion, for example, represents attraction toward and
facility with social interactions (e. g., Jensen-Campbell et al., 2002).
Highly outgoing individuals, who crave social contact, might also be
interested in immersing themselves in fictional social worlds (despite the
apparent decrease in real-world social contact such pursuits might en-
tail).
Agreeableness, a tendency toward empathic and prosocial responses
(e. g., Koole et al., 2001), is also a likely candidate. Individuals high on
this trait are likely to manifest the empathy required to understand fic-
tional characters making narrative engagement more real and perhaps
more pleasurable or interesting. Agreeable individuals are also likely to
perform better on measures of social ability.
Finally, trait Openness may play an explanatory role. Openness is as-
sociated with imaginative tendencies, curiosity, intellectual endeavors,
and creativity. Imagination is essential for narrative comprehension, al-
410 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
lowing us to vividly render the surroundings and situations being pre-
sented to us in literary fiction. This capacity may also aid perspective-
taking, allowing us to place ourselves in the shoes of story protagonists
and better understand other people (Taylor and Carlson, 1997).
The first step in testing whether reading predicts social ability beyond
Big Five personality is to examine the trait correlates of reading fiction
and non-fiction. Few previous studies have examined this question, with
previous work focusing on engagement with media such as television or
film (e. g., Weaver, 1991; Hall, 2005). What research does exist on read-
ing is somewhat mixed, with most studies reporting positive associations
between reading fiction and Openness (Finn, 1997; McManus and Furn-
ham, 2006; Tirre and Dixit, 1995), with inconsistent relations to Extra-
version and Agreeableness (Finn, 1997; Tirre and Dixit, 1995). Three
studies from our own lab found that Openness was indeed the only con-
sistent correlate of exposure to narrative fiction
1
. It appears that this
trait is the most important factor of personality to rule out as accounting
for the relation between reading fiction and social abilities.
Another important individual difference variable to control for is the
tendency to be drawn into fictional narratives (Gerrig, 1993). Those
more prone to these immersive and simulative experiences are logically
more likely to seek them out. At the same time, this same capacity to be
drawn into the representation of fictional characters could help us to
improve our understanding of real others and to perform better on
tasks that measure social abilities. Controlling for this construct in our
analyses will allow us to rule out the possibility that this tendency to-
ward narrative engagement can explain the relation between reading fic-
tion and empathic ability.
The last individual difference to take into account is gender. Women
are more likely to be readers (Statistics Canada, 1998), and are also more
empathic (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, 2004; Davis, 1980). To ensure
that the observed relation between reading and empathy is not simply a
function of gender, this variable needs to be controlled for in the statisti-
cal analyses.
Potential outcomes
Another useful extension of the previous finding is an examination of
whether exposure to narrative fiction has any real-world social corre-
lates, apart from improved performance on laboratory empathy tasks.
If the greater social ability of frequent readers observed previously can
be generalized to the real world, we would expect that readers might
have a larger social network, less loneliness, and less depression. It is
worth noting that this hypothesis is in direct contradiction of the stereo-
Fiction and empathy 411
type of a bookworm (England and Petro, 1998). Bookworms are often
seen as turning to literature and fictional characters in order to compen-
sate for the absence of real-world peers, immersing themselves in an
imaginary social world due to the lack of an actual social network.
Along with social awkwardness, frequent readers are often seen as hav-
ing fewer friends, being socially isolated, and experiencing more depres-
sion, loneliness, and stress as a result. Our own conception of readers,
however, predicts just the opposite.
Current studies
In this paper we further examine the nature of the association between
exposure to narrative fiction and empathy, from two perspectives. First,
we statistically control for three important individual difference vari-
ables, in order to rule out the possibility that the effects observed are
merely a function of Openness, narrative engagement, or gender. Sec-
ondly, we turn from ruling out alternative accounts to the further investi-
gation of social outcomes. Specifically, we investigate correlates pertain-
ing to social network size, social support, loneliness, and depression.
Method
Participants
A total of 252 participants completed the study. Individuals were re-
moved from the analysis because they were missing data due to com-
puter error (N18, 7.1 % of the sample population) or human error
(N4, 1.6 %) during testing. Individuals with less than 9 years of Eng-
lish fluency (N5, 2.0 %) were also removed, resulting in a final sample
of 225 persons (175 females), ranging in age from 17 to 38 years,
M18.9, SD 2.8. The majority had learned English as their first
language, N203, 90.2 %. Participants gave consent after learning the
aim of the study. After completing all the measures (order randomized
for each person), participants were debriefed and compensated for their
time.
Materials and procedure
Author Recognition Test (ART). Because erudition is so closely tied to
intelligence and sophistication in our culture, self-report assessments of
reading are vulnerable to biased responding (West, Stanovich, and
Mitchell, 1993). The original ART, developed by Stanovich and West
(1989), overcame this issue by employing a task-based approach that
412 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
relies upon a signal detection logic, allowing for a more objective rather
than subjective assessment. Respondents are asked to check off from a
list of names those that they recognize as authors. They are explicitly
told, however, that a number of the items are fake or foils (i. e., names
that are not those of authors), so guessing (or indiscriminate checking)
can easily be detected. While this does not provide a direct measure of
the amount of reading a person has done, it is a measure of how much
exposure to print an individual has had, which has been found to corre-
late strongly with book-reading and related behaviours (West et al.,
1993). Even if participants have not read a specific author, they are likely
to have learned about the person by reading reviews, discussing authors
they like, or browsing in bookstores and libraries all behaviors highly
associated with reading itself. Checklist measures of print-exposure have
been extensively validated. Scores on the ART are predicted by early
reading ability (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997), and predict actual
observed reading behavior (West et al., 1993), reading skills (Stanovich
and West, 1989), and acquisition of knowledge controlling for cognitive
ability (Stanovich and Cunningham, 1993; West et al., 1993). Versions
of the ART checklist have demonstrated better predictive validity than
more conventional self-report questionnaires (Allen, Cipielewski and
Stanovich, 1992, Se
´ne
´chal, LeFevre, Hudson, and Lawson, 1996), and
validity equal to daily diary approaches (Allen et al., 1992).
Mar and colleagues (2006) revised the ART, creating the two subscales
used in the present study: (1) an assessment of exposure to narrative
fiction (50 names, divided into 5 genres, such as thrillers, romance nov-
els, and science fiction), and (2) a measure of exposure to non-narrative
expository nonfiction (50 names across 5 genres, including philosophy,
business, and science). We also included 40 foils. This version of the
ART has been validated, demonstrating better prediction of vocabulary
than self-report measures of reading (Mar, Oatley and Peterson, 2008).
Big Five Inventory (BFI). Personality was measured using the Big Five
Inventory (BFI; John and Srivastava, 1999), a well-validated 44-item
measure of personality based on the Big Five model.
Self-report measure of fantasy. The Fantasy subscale of the Interpersonal
Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980) was employed to measure partici-
pants’ trait tendency to be transported into a narrative. Although the
scale author originally conceptualized this subscale as an aspect of empa-
thy, examination of the items reveals that this measure can be more
accurately described as an assessment of one’s tendency to become im-
mersed in narrative (see Table 1). This measure includes a total of 7
items, and only one item does not directly refer to immersion in narrative
Fiction and empathy 413
Table 1 . Items of the IRI Fantasy subscale.
Number Item
1 I daydream and fantasize, with some regularity, about things that might
happen to me.
2 I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel.
3 I am usually objective when I watch a movie or play, and I don’t often
get completely caught up in it.*
4 Becoming extremely involved in a good book or movie is somewhat rare
for me.*
5 After seeing a play or movie, I have felt as though I were one of the
characters.
6 When I watch a good movie, I can very easily put myself in the place of
a leading character.
7 When I am reading an interesting story or novel, I imagine how I would
feel if the events in the story were happening to me.
* Reverse-coded.
Item 1 was removed from all analyses in this study.
media (item 1). This is also the only item whose removal increases the
scale’s internal reliability (Chronbach’s alpha). Thus, for theoretical and
empirical reasons, this item was not included in the current analyses,
improving face validity and scale reliability. (The two versions of this
subscale are highly correlated, however, r.98, p<.05.) Respondents
rated the degree to which the statements were self-descriptive using a
five-point Likert scale. As a trait measure, this scale is distinct from more
common state measures of narrative transportation (e. g., Green and
Brock, 2000). While another trait measure of transportation exists (Dal
Cin, Zanna, and Fong, 2004), the authors were not aware of it at the
time of this data collection. Subsequent data from our lab has shown
these two scales to be highly correlated, r.62, p<.05; N260 (un-
published data).
Mind-in-the-Eyes task (MIE). Self-reported social acumen suffers from
a variety of limitations. Most notably, respondents are expected to have
access to accurate meta-cognitive evaluations of their own social ability.
Reporting these assessments without bias motivated by social desirability
is a second hurdle to accurate measurement. We thus relied on an objec-
tive task-based measure of empathy (an adult measure of theory of
mind) for our study. The MIE requires respondents to examine still pic-
tures of actors’ eye-regions and choose which of four possible mental
states is being represented (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, and
Plumb, 2001). Prior to the task all participants are familiarized with a
list of the mental state terms that will be presented, controlling for differ-
414 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
ences in vocabulary. This list remains accessible to the individual during
testing for their reference. Individuals with autism or Asperger syn-
drome, who are often characterized by severe social deficits, perform
worse on this measure than IQ-matched controls (Baron-Cohen et al.,
2001), demonstrating that performance is independent of intelligence.
Along parallel lines, in a normal population, performance on this task
is negatively correlated with scores on a measure of autism-spectrum
disorder symptomatology (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001). Using an earlier
version of this test (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, and Robertson,
1997), patients with frontal lobe dementia were found to perform worse
than both normal controls and patients with Alzheimer’s; this dementia
group also underperformed on other theory-of-mind tests (Gregory et
al., 2002). Lastly, a brain imaging study found that regions previously
associated with numerous other mental-inference tasks are activated
when normally developing individuals attempt to infer the mental states
of the persons depicted in the MIE materials (Platek, Keenan, Gallup
Jr., and Mohamed, 2004).
Social isolation and loneliness. In order to investigate the social out-
comes associated with reading narrative fiction, measures of social net-
work and social support were administered. If readers have better social
abilities, we would also expect them perhaps to have a larger social net-
work and perceive more social support. The measures employed to assess
these variables included: (1) the Social Network Index (SNI; Cohen,
Doyle, Skoner, Rabin, and Gwaltney, 1997) which yields a score for the
number of high contact roles a person possesses (of 12 possible), along
with a score for the number of people within his or her social network;
and (2) the Interpersonal Support Evaluation ListCollege Version
(ISEL; Cohen and Hoberman, 1983), which requires respondents to indi-
cate whether the items are either “Probably True” or “Probably False”
in relation to their selves for four subscales: (i) Tangible (perceived avail-
ability of material aid), (ii) Appraisal (perceived availability of someone
to talk to), (iii) Belonging (perceived availability of people to engage in
activities with), and (iv) Self-Esteem (perceived positive sense of self in
comparison to others).
Measures of loneliness, stress and depression were also included, to
see if readers experience less social isolation. These variables were mea-
sured using: (1) the UCLA Loneliness Inventory (UCLA-LI; Russell,
1996), which taps the degree to which someone feels connected to those
around him or her, as indicated by their self-reported frequency of cer-
tain thoughts or feelings, using a four-point Likert scale; (2) the Per-
ceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen, Karmark, and Mermelstein, 1983),
which examines stress and coping responses by requiring respondents to
Fiction and empathy 415
indicate the frequency of certain thoughts and emotions using a five-
point Likert scale; and (3) the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck,
1988), a widely-used measure of clinical depression, in which each item
requires respondents to indicate which of four statements is self-applica-
ble. Because these social outcomes are somewhat distal from social abili-
ties and empathy, the effects involving these variables are expected to be
smaller and may even be absent.
Results
Scale scores and gender differences
Participants checked very few of the foil items on the ART (M1.1,
SD 1.9), 91.6 % of the sample checked three or fewer foils. The reliabil-
ity for Fiction (Cronbach’s α.90) and Non-Fiction (Cronbach’s α
.82) in this sample was high. Reliability for the slightly revised Fantasy
measure was also high, Cronbach’s α.81. Reliabilities for the other
measures are reported in source articles. For all analyses reported, all
ps<.05 (two-tailed) unless stated otherwise.
No statistically significant differences in personality were found
between the sexes in this sample, all ps>.05; Openness: M3.6,
SD .31; Extraversion: M3.3, SD .73; Agreeableness: M3.8,
SD .57; Conscientiousness: M3.5, SD .64; Emotional Stability:
M2.9, SD .69. However, gender differences were observed on a
number of the other variables measured. Males scored lower on fiction
print-exposure (d0.54; t⫽⫺4.40; M
males
4.5, M
females
8.2), the
social ability task (MIE: d0.65; t⫽⫺4.04; M
males
25.5, M
females
27.8), and rated themselves lower on the measure of narrative engage-
ment, IRI Fantasy: d0.40; t⫽⫺2.47; M
males
3.5, M
females
3.8.
With respect to self-reported stress and social support, males scored
lower on only one measure, seeing themselves as less likely than females
to have someone to talk to, ISE Appraisal: d0.58; t⫽⫺3.14; M
males
8.2, M
females
9.8. Gender was thus covaried out for all of the following
analyses, except in those cases where separate analyses were conducted
for males and females.
Raw correlations between print-exposure and social ability
The number of foils checked by each participant was subtracted from
the number of valid names recognized on the ART, to form corrected
indices of exposure to narrative fiction and expository non-fiction. Pear-
son correlations were then calculated between these scores and the social
ability measure, for the total sample and for each gender (see Table 2).
416 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
Table 2 . Inter-scale correlations for measures of print-exposure and social ability by
gender.
ART-NF MIE IRI-FS BFI-O BFI-C BFI-E BFI-A BFI-ES
ART-FC .60* .21* .17* .22* .09 .04 .07 .02
.64* .16* .09 .24* .06 .07 .06 .05
(.50*) (.15) (.42*) (.14) (.09) (.14) (.22) (.01)
ART-NF .08 .04 .20* .09 .02 .05 .01
.09 .01 .24* .11 .02 .02 .01
(.05) (.20) (.06) (.01) (.05) (.14) (.06)
MIE .21* .15* .02 .03 .04 .14*
.17* .17* .01 .02 .03 .10
(.20) (.08) (.14) (.22) (.13) (.17)
IRI-FS .26* .04 .09 .06 .07
.27* .04 .07 .08 .03
(.24) (.08) (.13) (.05) (.10)
BFI-O .10 .16* .01 .13
.08 .17* .01 .13
(.16) (.10) (.02) (.11)
BFI-C .17* .28* .27*
.13 .26* .19*
(.31*) (.34*) (.62*)
BFI-E .08 .31*
.10 .32*
(.03) (.38*)
BFI-A .34*
.34*
(.37*)
Notes: *p<.05. ART-FC ART Fiction, ART-NF ART Nonfiction, IRI-FS
IRI Fantasy, BFI-O Openness, BFI-C Conscientiousness, BFI-E Extraversion,
BFI-A Agreeableness, BFI-ES Emotional Stability. Numbers in bold represent
the entire sample. Coefficients not in bold are for females only (N 175). Coefficients
for males reported in parentheses (N 50).
Full sample. Although exposure to narrative fiction and expository non-
fiction were highly correlated, Fiction was associated with the empathy
task (the MIE), whereas Nonfiction was not. This difference in associa-
tion was statistically significant, t(222) 2.22. Moreover, the magnitude
of this association was not trivial, falling as it does within the middle
third of all effect-sizes observed in psychology, for measures that employ
different methods (Hemphill, 2003).
In line with the findings of our pilot work
1
, trait Openness was the
only personality factor associated with fiction print-exposure. Perform-
ance on the MIE task was also correlated with Openness, making this
trait the most important personality factor to control for statistically, in
order to rule out the possibility that trait personality is responsible for
the association observed between exposure to narrative fiction and so-
cial ability.
Fiction and empathy 417
IRI Fantasy was also correlated with the empathy task, indicating
that individuals who find themselves more easily drawn into narratives
perform better than others when asked to infer the mental states of target
individuals. Since Fantasy was also related to exposure to narrative fic-
tion, it also appears to be an important individual difference variable to
control for.
Gender differences. Correlation magnitudes between males and females
in this sample were tested for statistically significant differences (Steiger,
1980). A tendency toward narrative engagement predicted exposure to
narrative fiction to a greater degree in males relative to females, r
diff
.33, Z⫽⫺2.17. It thus appears that an ability to see oneself in a story
and simulate the experiences described is more important for predicting
the reading behavior of men than women. This may explain the gender
difference in reading behavior between the sexes (Statistics Canada,
1998), or it may simply be a reflection of cultural expectations. Perhaps
young children are acculturated with the idea that reading is an appro-
priate activity for females but less so for males, and only a strong natural
imaginative tendency can overcome these implicit messages for males.
Association between print-exposure and empathy: Ruling out the role
of individual differences
In order to rule out the possibility that the association between exposure
to narrative fiction and empathy can be explained by individual differ-
ences, we conducted a hierarchical linear regression predicting MIE
scores, with control variables entered in the first block and exposure to
narrative fiction entered in the second block. First, a composite variable
averaging age and years of English fluency was created, due to their
high correlation (r.86) and concerns regarding multicollinearity. This
variable, along with gender, Openness, and IRI Fantasy scores were en-
tered in the first block, and ARTFiction entered in the second block.
The results of this analysis are presented in Table 3.
In the first block, gender and Fantasy scores were both unique predic-
tors of performance on the MIE task. When fiction print-exposure was
entered into the second block, it was identified as a unique predictor,
and the addition of this variable yielded a statistically significant increase
in variance accounted for by the model, F(1, 219) 3.94. In this model,
gender remained a unique predictor, with Fantasy just failing to attain
statistical significance (p.06). Thus, exposure to narrative fiction pre-
dicts performance on an empathy task, controlling for age, gender, Eng-
lish fluency, trait Openness, and tendency to become immersed in fiction.
418 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
Table 3 . Regression showing prediction of MIE scores by fiction print-exposure, con-
trolling for gender, age, years of English fluency, trait Openness, and tendency to become
immersed in fiction.
Variable BSE βt
Model 1 Gender 2.08 .57 .24 3.67*
R
2
.11 Fantasy .64 .30 .14 2.10*
F(4, 220) 6.82* Openness .69 .41 .11 1.71
AgeFluency .08 .08 .06 .97
Model 2 Fiction .07 .04 .14 1.99*
R
2
.13 Gender 1.8 .58 .21 3.11*
F(5, 219) 6.31* Fantasy .58 .30 .13 1.93
Openness .56 .41 .09 1.37
AgeFluency .11 .08 .09 1.39
*p<.05
Exposure to fiction or nonfiction, social support, loneliness, and stress
In order to examine whether individuals who read more see themselves
as having a larger social network and experiencing less negative affect as
a result, correlations between lifetime exposure to fiction or nonfiction
texts and the various measures of support and stress were calculated.
Because some of these variables violated the normality assumption re-
quired for the calculation of a Pearson correlation coefficient (i.e., ISE
Tangible, ISE Appraisal, and the BDI), a nonparametric statistic (Spear-
man’s rho) was employed to examine these associations. Table 4 presents
the results of this analysis for both the total sample, and for the two gen-
ders.
Full sample. More frequent readers did not report fewer or more individ-
uals in their social network, nor did they report fewer or more high-
contact social roles. Exposure to nonfiction, however, was negatively
related to the measure of self-perceived belongingness (ISE Belonging)
whereas exposure to fiction was unrelated, and this difference was almost
statistically significant (Steiger, 1980), t(222) 1.92, p.06. Nonfiction
was also positively related to self-reported loneliness (UCLA), whereas
fiction was not related, and this difference was statistically significant,
t(222) 2.54
2
. In contrast, those who were exposed to more narrative
fiction saw themselves as having more people available to talk to (higher
scores on ISE Appraisal), and those exposed to more nonfiction exhib-
ited no such relation, t(222) 2.22. The general picture, then, is that
there is no evidence that frequent reading has any substantial impact on
social support and associated loneliness or depression. Tentatively, it
Fiction and empathy 419
Table 4. Inter-scale correlations (Spearman’s rho) for measures of print-exposure, social support, loneliness and stress.
Print Exposure Social support Loneliness Stress
ART- ART- SNI SNI ISE ISE ISE ISE UCLA BDI PSS
FC NF role number tangible belonging appraisal SE
ART-FC .48* .05 .13 .00 .01 .13* .02 .04 .08 .10
.51* .03 .13 .04 .01 .06 .07 .06 .12 .16*
(.45*) (.01) (.13) (.02) (.13) (.19) (.02) (.08) (.02) (.06)
ART-NF .02 .04 .04 .14* .02 .10 .21* .09 .03
.04 .05 .07 .11* .01 .01 .19* .04 .06
(.23) (.02) (.06) (.23) (.05) (.24) (.27) (.27) (.10)
SNI .59* .14* .24* .15* .21* .22* .04 .11
role .57* .17* .25* .12 .26* .21* .02 .09
(.66*) (.08) (.21) (.27) (.10) (.29*) (.13) (.24)
SNI .30* .46* .28* .30* .31* .21* .21*
number .33* .51* .28* .35* .34* .18* .19*
(.20) (.26) (.32*) (.12) (.19) (.28*) (.29*)
ISE .50* .30* .22* .33* .20* .17*
tangible .49* .27* .19* .29* .17* .18*
(.51*) (.35*) (.36*) (.47*) (.35*) (.23*)
ISE .42* .42* .58* .37* .44*
belonging .39* .42* .58* .35* .44*
(.49*) (.47*) (.59*) (.50*) (.50*)
ISE .23* .47* .27* .25*
appraisal .28* .44* .28* .28*
(.13) (.55*) (.53*) (.45*)
ISE .52* .49* .44*
Self-esteem .52* .47 .43*
(.54*) (.53*) (.45*)
UCLA .55* .51*
.52* .49*
(.69*) (.62*)
BDI .69*
.68*
(.67*)
Notes: *p<.05. ART-FC ART Fiction, ART-NF ART Nonfiction. Numbers in bold represent the entire sample. Coefficients not in bold
are for females only (N 175). Coefficients for males reported in parentheses (N 50).
420 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
might be said that there appears to be some positive association between
exposure to narrative fiction and more social support, and a negative
association for exposure to nonfiction. In light of the social measures
for which no association was found, however, this interpretation should
be viewed with caution.
Gender differences. As before, differences between males and females for
these associations were examined for statistical significance (Steiger,
1980). For males, exposure to nonfiction was negatively correlated with
the number of high contact roles. This was not the case for females,
|ρ
diff
|.27, Z1.67, p.05. Nonfiction was also more negatively
associated with self-esteem and more positively correlated with depres-
sion for males relative to females, although these differences just failed
to reach threshold for statistical significance, ISE Self-esteem: |ρ
diff
|
.23, Z1.43, p.08; BDI: |ρ
diff
|.23, Z1.44, p.08.
Exposure to expository nonfiction thus appears to be a stronger pre-
dictor of negative social outcomes for males relative to females. The
causal direction of this association, of course, cannot be determined.
Males who feel depressed, have low self-esteem, and have fewer friends
whom they see often, may seek solace in nonfiction texts or their avid
interest in nonfiction may exclude them socially, resulting in negative
affect and lower self-esteem.
Discussion
The previous finding by Mar and colleagues (2006), of an association
between reading fiction and levels of empathy, might be explained by a
number of possible theories. One possibility is that fiction readers simply
have particular personality traits that also make them more empathetic.
In order to rule out the possibility that trait personality could be respon-
sible for the association between narrative fiction and social ability, we
set out to find the individual differences most highly correlated with
fiction reading. In pilot studies and the extant literature we found that
narrative fiction reading is related to the Big Five trait of Openness to
Experience, but not consistently with any other trait
1
. In this study we
attempted to rule out the possibility that this trait can explain the rela-
tion between fiction reading and empathy. We also set out to account
for a more specific individual difference, the tendency to feel transported
into the world of a narrative, as well as gender. Hierarchical linear re-
gressions demonstrated that fiction print-exposure predicts performance
on an empathy task, even after gender, age, English fluency, trait Open-
ness, and trait Fantasy are statistically controlled. This finding helps to
rule out the possibility that mere individual differences are responsible
Fiction and empathy 421
for the observed association between fiction exposure and empathy. Our
confidence in this assertion has increased further in light of our previous
work, which ruled out the potential role of intelligence and non-fiction
reading (Mar et al., 2006). Also in this study, the social life of frequent
readers was explored, moving beyond empathy to other social variables
such as loneliness and social network size. Nonfiction was positively
associated with loneliness and negatively related to belongingness,
whereas fiction was related to self-perceived availability of confidants.
Moreover, the association between exposure to nonfiction and loneliness
should not be considered trivial, as it is equivalent to the median effect-
size for studies in personality (Fraley and Marks, 2007). Overall, how-
ever, there were no consistent associations with social network, depres-
sion, and perceived stress.
Ruling out Big Five personality
The data from this study show that it is not merely the case that individ-
uals who are more open to experience tend to enjoy fiction more and
also perform better on tests of empathy. Examining the role of trait
personality is an important step in any research program, and in doing
so, we have ruled out one major possible explanation for the positive
relation between narrative fiction and empathy. Across the previous
study (Mar et al., 2006) and the current one, we have taken a conserva-
tive approach, by looking at the incremental prediction of exposure to
narrative fiction beyond numerous individual difference variables,
increasing our confidence in the reliability and robustness of this associa-
tion.
Narrative transportation and empathy
The self-reported tendency to become highly absorbed in fictional pro-
ducts such as literature and movies is related to both empathy and narra-
tive fiction print-exposure. In our hierarchical regression, trait Fantasy
was an independent predictor of empathy ability, controlling for a vari-
ety of individual difference variables including one’s exposure to narra-
tive fiction.
It seems that a ready capacity to project oneself into a story may assist
in projecting oneself into another’s mind in order to infer their mental
states. It has recently been observed that a very similar pattern of brain
activity underlies such diverse cognitive processes as autobiographical
memory, future-thinking, spatial navigation and mental inferencing, and
that this network may represent self-projection (Buckner and Carroll,
2007; Spreng, Mar, and Kim, 2009). This network also appears to be
422 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
important for story comprehension (Mar, 2004; Ferstl, Neumann, Bog-
ler, and von Cramon, 2008), indicating that a single process, perhaps
self-projection, could support both mental inferencing and story compre-
hension. In children, imaginative abilities are related to the development
of social comprehension (Taylor and Carlson, 1997), and in adults this
capacity to really empathize with fiction appears to explain, in part, why
fiction-reading habits relate to social skills.
Of course, the precise role of this individual difference variable has yet
to be determined. Reading could improve our tendency to “get into”
stories, and also understand others. Or, those who are naturally more
inclined to feel transported by fiction, may read more and thus become
better at understanding others. The fact that this prediction was demon-
strated in a multiple regression model that included Openness is particu-
larly interesting, as it demonstrates that the construct of narrative trans-
portation or fantasy is something unique from what is captured by this
trait.
The social world of readers
The stereotype of a bookworm as socially awkward and lonely was fur-
ther challenged by the data in this study, which provided convergent
evidence to bolster our findings regarding empathic abilities. Frequent
readers do not report smaller social networks or more loneliness and
stress. What we observed was another separation between exposure to
narrative fiction and expository nonfiction. Reading narrative fiction
was associated with more social support and reading expository nonfic-
tion was related to less social support and more stress. This finding must
be interpreted cautiously, however, in light of the fact that these relations
were not consistent across measures of social support. An interesting
gender difference also emerged, in that exposure to expository nonfiction
was more associated with negative outcomes (less social support, lower
self-esteem and more depression) in males than in females.
Because we measured perceived social support rather than objective
social support, some interesting possibilities emerge for explaining why
individuals exposed to more narrative fiction feel they have more people
available to speak to. Perhaps these individuals are drawing support
from the fictional characters that they encounter in novels, engaging in a
form of parasocial relationship. A desire for social contact may motivate
anthropomorphization, or the tendency to see fictional characters as
possessing agency and personality (Epley, Waytz and Cacciopo, 2007).
Research has demonstrated that favourite television characters can influ-
ence us in a manner similar to real peers, particularly if they are seen as
“real” (Gardner and Knowles, 2008). Findings that people who are feel-
Fiction and empathy 423
ing lonely may be more likely to watch television are also consistent with
this idea (Derrick, Gabriel, and Hugenberg, 2009; Jonason, Webster, and
Lindsey, 2008). Exploring whether these same effects hold for the reading
of narrative fiction would seem to be an interesting possibility for fu-
ture research.
It must be noted that one result from the previous work by Mar and
colleagues (2006) was not directly replicated in the current study. We did
not find a negative association between exposure to expository nonfic-
tion and empathy (cf. Mar et al., 2006). In this sample, the partial corre-
lation between exposure to nonfiction and the MIE, similar to that em-
ployed by Mar and colleagues (2006), reveals no statistically significant
association, pr ⫽⫺.03, p>.05. It is unclear why this effect was not
found in this sample, and this is something that certainly deserves careful
attention. It is worth noting, however, that in this sample exposure to
expository nonfiction was associated with loneliness and a low sense of
belonging, symptoms consistent with poor social abilities. Moreover, the
social ability task that was most negatively associated with exposure to
nonfiction in the previous study (Mar et al., 2006), the Interpersonal
Perception Task-15 (Costanzo and Archer, 1993), was not included here.
Limitations
Future studies should experimentally investigate the causal direction of
the observed association between exposure to narrative fiction and social
ability, since such inferences cannot be derived from correlational stud-
ies. One potential approach might involve participants being assigned a
diet of fiction over some weeks along with pre- and post-manipulation
assessments of social skills. More direct examinations of the two remain-
ing hypothesized mechanisms (i. e., direct transfer of social knowledge
and honing of social cognitive processes) are necessary.
Subsequent studies should also incorporate a more diverse sample,
since most research to date has employed undergraduate students. The
restricted range of this group may mean that the current findings are
underestimates of any effect in the general population. A university stu-
dent population is more likely to contain frequent readers than the gene-
ral population at large. Our pilot work, however, did confirm that the
personality correlates of reading are largely identical for undergraduate
and older populations
1
.
There may be some concern with how to interpret the association
between IRI Fantasy and the MIE. One might argue that since both
are measures of empathy, the positive correlation between the two is
completely unsurprising and therefore uninteresting. However, examina-
tion of both of these measures reveals that they are quite dissimilar and
424 Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley and Jordan B. Peterson
likely should not be considered equivalent measures of the same latent
construct. The MIE involves pairing mental-state terms to pictures of a
person’s eye-region, whereas the IRI Fantasy scale asks respondents to
self-report their own tendency to become deeply involved in books and
film (see Table 1). That these two measures are correlated is interesting,
and congruent with various theories put forward relating empathy to
fiction (e. g., Keen, 2006; Mar and Oatley, 2008; Zillmann, 1994). From
the perspective of this study, which controlled for IRI Fantasy in order
to rule out trait differences, even if Fantasy is interpreted as a form
of empathy directly related to narrative experience, controlling for this
construct makes the continued prediction of empathy by reading even
more compelling.
Conclusion
There is growing evidence that reading narratives, even those explicitly
labeled as fiction, is far from a meaningless leisure activity that ends
when one closes the cover of a book (Green, Strange, and Brock, 2002).
Several researchers have demonstrated that exposure to narrative fiction
can influence our attitudes toward various issues (Green, 2004; Green
and Brock, 2000; Prentice, Gerrig, and Bailis, 1997; Strange and Leung,
1999). From these findings as well as those reported here and previously
(Mar et al., 2006), evidence is accumulating that the reading of narrative
fiction can have important consequences, whose quality and underlying
mechanisms require closer study.
Bionotes
Raymond A. Mar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychol-
ogy at York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3.
Keith Oatley is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Human De-
velopment and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto, 252
Bloor Street W., Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1V6.
Jordan Peterson is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the
University of Toronto, 100 St. George St., Toronto, ON, Canada M5S
3G3.
Notes
1. Pilot work examining three separate samples (N188; N636; N158) from
both University undergraduate and community samples (ESCS dataset; Goldberg,
1999) found that Openness was the most consistent unique predictor of exposure
Fiction and empathy 425
to narrative fiction. Analyses conducted using the NEO PI-R facets (Costa and
McCrae, 1992) were congruent with factor-level associations. For more details,
please see supplementary material at: http://www.yorku.ca/mar/papers/
2. Because the nonfiction print-exposure measure included self-help as a genre, it is
possible that exposure to this particular form of nonfiction was driving the ob-
served associations for loneliness and lack of social support. However, when this
category of book was removed from the calculation of Nonfiction, the new variable
correlated highly with the total Nonfiction score (r.94) and the pattern of results
remained unchanged.
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... However, the development of divergent thinking skills does not occur in isolation; various factors such as sex, exposure to literature and arts, and attitude toward literature and arts can influence how these skills manifest in students (Baer & Kaufman, 2008;Breen, 2001;Mar et al., 2009;Zwaan, 2003) when literature and the arts are often underappreciated in STEM curricula, despite that they play a significant role in cultivating creativity. This research investigates the divergent thinking skills of Grade 12 STEM students. ...
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Full-text available
This study examines the differences in divergent thinking skills among Grade 12 STEM students based on sex, exposure to literature and arts, and attitudes toward these subjects. Data were collected from 234 students using creative thinking assessments and surveys. The results showed no significant differences in divergent thinking skills between male and female students. However, significant differences were found based on students' exposure to literature and arts and their attitudes toward these fields. Students with greater exposure and more positive attitudes demonstrated higher fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. The study underscores the importance of integrating literature and arts into STEM education to enhance creativity and recommends curriculum adjustments to foster greater artistic engagement.
... Reading literature can have a positive impact on cognitive, social, and emotional competencies (Mar et al., 2009;Oatley, 2016;Wolf, 2018). However, reading literary texts is an activity that is under pressure in today's technology-driven society (Cole, 2009), and the motivation among Norwegian adolescents to read literature seems to be declining (Roe, 2020). ...
... «Det blir jo som å se en film i kvart fart, da blir det fort tragisk» -yrkesfagelevers motivasjon for lesing av skjønnlitteraere tekster Sammendrag Å lese skjønnlitteraere tekster kan ha en positiv innvirkning på kognitive, sosiale og emosjonelle kompetanser (Mar et al., 2009;Oatley, 2016;Wolf, 2018). Lesing av skjønnlitteratur er imidlertid en aktivitet som er under press i dagens teknologibaserte samfunn (Cole, 2009), og motivasjonen blant norske ungdommer for å lese skjønnlitteratur ser ut til å vaere minkende (Roe, 2020). ...
... Lesing av skjønnlitteratur ser også ut til å kunne ha innvirkning på våre sosiale og emosjonelle kompetanser (Dodell-Feder & Tamir, 2018;Mar et al., 2009). Forskere har vist at lesing av skjønnlitteraere tekster og sosial kognisjon involverer nokså like prosesser i hjernen; forskning innen nevrovitenskap viser at aktiviteten i hjernens standardmodusnettverk øker når man leser litteraere passasjer med sosialt innhold (Tamir et al., 2016). ...
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Å lese skjønnlitterære tekster kan ha en positiv innvirkning på kognitive, sosiale og emosjonelle kompetanser (Mar et al., 2009; Oatley, 2016; Wolf, 2018). Lesing av skjønnlitteratur er imidlertid en aktivitet som er under press i dagens teknologibaserte samfunn (Cole, 2009), og motivasjonen blant norske ungdommer for å lese skjønn­litteratur ser ut til å være minkende (Roe, 2020). Samtidig foreligger det lite forskning som gir dypere innsikt i elevenes lesemotivasjon, spesielt blant yrkesfaglige elever. I denne studien undersøker vi derfor yrkesfagelevers motivasjon for lesing av skjønn­litteratur i norskfaget. Gjennom dybdeintervjuer av åtte elever ved barne- og ungdoms­arbeiderfag (vg2) undersøker vi 1) hvilken oppfatning elevene har av seg selv som lesere av skjønnlitteratur, og 2) hvilken verdi de tillegger lesing av skjønnlitteratur. Et hoved­funn i studien er at elevene i liten grad oppfatter seg selv som lesere, og de erfarer et klassemiljø som gjennom en kollektiv identitetsfølelse av å være «ikke-lesere» for­sterker deres negative selvoppfatning. I tillegg anser de at kostnaden forbundet med lesing av skjønnlitteratur– som kognitive krav og tidsbruk – er høy. Et annet hovedfunn er at elevene gir uttrykk for lav verdsetting av lesing av skjønnlitterære tekster, særlig knyttet til gjentatte møter med uinteressant litteratur og uinspirerende litteraturunder­visning. Funnene antyder at det er viktig å styrke et positivt læringsmiljø for å støtte elevenes syn på seg selv som lesere og deres verdsetting av lesing. Samtidig er det et potensial for flere didaktiske strategier for å styrke elevenes lesemotivasjon, slik som å benytte støttestrukturer, fremme elevautonomi og sikre relevans.
... Fiction, that is, "literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation" (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.), has been found to serve both enjoyment and insight (e.g., Dubourg & Baumard, 2022; as well as other purposes, see Djikic et al., 2013;Kidd & Castano, 2013;Mar & Oatley, 2008;Mar et al., 2009;Park, 1982;Ricoeur, 1979;Wimmer et al., 2024). Zooming in on insight, empirical evidence shows that humans acquire both accurate and inaccurate information contained in fiction (for an overview, see . ...
... Fiction, that is, "literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation" (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.), has been found to serve both enjoyment and insight (e.g., Dubourg & Baumard, 2022; as well as other purposes, see Djikic et al., 2013;Kidd & Castano, 2013;Mar & Oatley, 2008;Mar et al., 2009;Park, 1982;Ricoeur, 1979;Wimmer et al., 2024). Zooming in on insight, empirical evidence shows that humans acquire both accurate and inaccurate information contained in fiction (for an overview, see . ...
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In addition to accurate information, people also acquire inaccurate information (i.e., a type of semantically inconsistent information) when reading fictional texts. This can result from low epistemic vigilance during reading. Here, we examine the prediction that low (vs. high) accessibility of fictional texts increases epistemic vigilance (approximated as reading time per syllable for semantically inconsistent compared to consistent information). In addition, we explore two associations: first, accessibility with transportation and perceived effects of foregrounding (both measured via self-report), and second, accessibility with acceptance of fiction-based inaccuracies (measured via a general knowledge test). Undergraduate students (n = 102) were randomly assigned to read a fictional story either high or low in accessibility (i.e., accessibility varied between subjects), after which perceived foregrounding, transportation, and then acceptance of inaccurate fiction-based information as accurate were collected. Contrary to our hypothesis, high instead of low accessibility increased epistemic vigilance. Furthermore, accessibility was unrelated to transportation and negatively linked with perceived foregrounding. The acceptance of inaccurate information could not be analyzed due to a floor effect. We exclude several alternative explanations for the pattern of results, such as too high text difficulty. In sum, high text accessibility increases epistemic vigilance and presumably can contribute to reducing the acquisition of inaccurate information.
... This association is maintained even when the participants' age, gender, personality, and general intelligence are statistically controlled (Fong et al., 2013;D. Kidd & Castano, 2017;Mar et al., 2006Mar et al., , 2009. Experimental studies have shown causal increases in empathy and mentalizing performance after reading fiction (Dodell-Feder & Tamir, 2018). ...
... Although the association between ART and RMET scores has been interpreted as evidence of a link between fiction reading habits and social cognition (Fong et al., 2013;D. Kidd & Castano, 2017;Mar et al., 2006Mar et al., , 2009, it may instead reflect the verbal knowledge developed during fiction reading. That is, a rich vocabulary is necessary to score high on the RMET, as this test uses uncommon words to describe mental states (Dodell-Feder et al., 2020). ...
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Fiction reading habits are thought to be associated with a favorable social–cognitive profile, including increased mentalizing skills and decreased stereotypical beliefs. However, the available evidence for this association is largely based on a specific task, the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test (RMET), and on data collected from Western populations. This raises questions regarding the generalizability of the findings. We addressed this issue by examining the relationships between fiction reading habits (as measured by the Author Recognition Test) and several social cognitive variables, such as basic emotion recognition from facial expressions and the acceptance of stereotyping, in adults in the United Kingdom and Japan. Among U.K. adults, fiction reading habits were positively correlated with performance on both the RMET and the basic emotion recognition task and negatively correlated with the acceptance of stereotyping in general, although their relationship with facial stereotyping (common beliefs linking facial appearance to personality) was unclear. Meanwhile, these relationships were not statistically significant in Japanese adults. Thus, in the United Kingdom, the positive association of fiction reading habits with mentalizing skills seems to generalize beyond the RMET, whereas the negative association with stereotypical beliefs may not hold for facial stereotyping. The lack of similar associations in Japan may reflect differences in the measurement materials and/or storytelling traditions between the two countries, highlighting the importance of further research in non-Western populations.
... No campo da linguagem persuasiva, a neurociência também oferece outras ferramentas, por exemplo, estudos sobre processamento de linguagem indicam que narrativas pessoais e histórias são mais eficazes para engajar o cérebro do que simples exposições de fatos (Mar et al., 2009). ...
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Este artigo explora a interseção entre neurociência e publicidade digital, focando no uso de técnicas de neuromarketing para personalizar anúncios e maximizar o engajamento dos usuários e conversão de vendas. Através da análise de padrões de navegação, preferências de consumo e dados biométricos, as plataformas digitais criam perfis detalhados dos usuários e, atrelados a gatilhos mentais, permite a personalização precisa de anúncios para atingir os objetivos definidos. O estudo destaca a importância de entender as respostas emocionais e cognitivas dos consumidores para criar mensagens publicitárias que ressoem emocionalmente, promovendo um maior engajamento e lealdade à marca. Além disso, o estudo discute questões éticas e de privacidade relacionadas ao uso de dados pessoais, sublinhando a necessidade de práticas transparentes e responsáveis na coleta e utilização dessas informações. Este equilíbrio é crucial para garantir que as estratégias de neuromarketing sejam eficazes, sem comprometer a confiança e os direitos dos consumidores. A pesquisa utiliza uma abordagem qualitativa e descritiva, baseada em análise bibliográfica e documental, para fornecer uma visão abrangente sobre as práticas de neuromarketing.
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The emotional bond between the primary caregiver and the child serves as a foundation for an individual’s well-being both during childhood and later life. The evolution of these bonds may be a fragile process and largely depends on the caregiver’s actions and mental well-being. An avoidant and distancing mentality can have long historical roots across generations and it can be culturally specific. Neglect may result from both personal and social traumatic events, such as wars or famines, as well as everyday repetitive trauma. This chapter will investigate the coping mechanisms—both positive and negative—of Finns during and after the Great Wrath (1712–1721), which proved to be a traumatic period for many adults and children. The cultural and social coping mechanisms will be identified based on sites related to the events of the Wrath, historical sources, memorials, folklore, and burial evidence. These will be examined through psychological knowledge on how children respond to traumatic events, how it affects their well-being in later life, how trauma is transmitted between generations, and how it manifests in violent acts. The chapter will also consider how competence, empathy, and mentalising can provide resilience and be restorative for both individuals and groups of people.
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This much-needed book introduces readers to the related fields of expertise, creativity, and performance, exploring our understanding of the factors contributing to greatness in creative domains. Bringing together research from the fields of creativity and expertise, it provides fresh insights for newcomers and seasoned scholars alike with its approachable guide to the multidimensional complexities of expertise development. It transcends traditionally studied fields such as chess, sports, and music, instead exploring the intersection of expertise with creativity and the performing arts. Dedicated applied chapters cover eight fields, including mind-games, music, dance, creative writing, acting, art, and STEM. The book also examines the facilitators of creative performance, including aesthetic sensitivity, creativity, and mental imagery as well as the obstacles to performance such as burnout, procrastination, and gender-related challenges. The book concludes by engaging with pressing issues facing expertise, including the impact of AI. Student-friendly pedagogy is featured throughout, including 'Spotlight on...', 'Check it out...', and 'Consider this...' boxes to position material within context and engage students' learning. Whether revealing how an actor brings their part to life, how writers conjure up their storylines and vibrant characters, or what lies behind scientific invention, The Psychology of Creative Performance and Expertise offers a fascinating insight into the multifaceted journey towards achieving creative excellence. This is a valuable resource for final-year undergraduates, postgraduate students, and scholars across a range of disciplines, including expertise or skill acquisition, the psychology of performance, and creativity.
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Scientific interest in the processing and effects of narrative information has substantially increased in recent years. The focus of this chapter is on narrative transportation, an experiential state of immersion in which all mental processes are concentrated on the events occurring in the narrative. We describe and integrate interdisciplinary advances in the study of narrative transportation. After an introduction of the concept and related approaches, we outline antecedents in terms of story factors, individual differences, situational variables, and related interactions. In the following sections, we introduce processes and effects that are facilitated by stories and narrative transportation. This includes research on persuasion, misinformation and its correction, self and identity, social cognitive skills, and on the fulfillment of belongingness needs. We close with an outlook on the role of technology and artificial intelligence, meaning making, and climate change communication as emerging and future directions.
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Reading exhibits a principle of expertise: the more one does it the more skilled one is likely to become both in the activity and in content knowledge. Our experiences with text lead to the acquisition of both vocabulary and general knowledge. Research from our group examines how reading can have other outcomes. With a starting point of fiction as an entryway into simulations of social interactions, we review empirical studies of how the reading of fiction can improve empathy and other social abilities, and prompt changes in personality.
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A taxonomy of emotions of literary response is presented. Some emotions occur as readers confront a text: they depend on curiosity as new material is assimilated to schemata, or on dishabituation as schemata accommodate. Further modes of emotion arise if readers enter the world of a story: they arise as a writer represents eliciting patterns of emotion and the reader responds with sympathy as story characters face these patterns, from personal memories of emotion, and by identification with characters' goals and plans. Based on cognitive theory and literary criticism, a theory of identification in fictional literature is presented, derived from Aristotle's concept mimesis. The usual translations, ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’, are misleading: mimesis means something closer to ‘simulation’, as in computers. Fictional simulations run on people's minds. For them to run successfully readers (a) adopt a character's goals and use their own planning procedures to connect actions together meaningfully, (b) form mental models of imagined worlds, (c) receive speech acts addressed to them by the writer, and (d) integrate disparate elements to create a unified experience. In providing materials for these functions, great writers allow readers to respond creatively, to feel moved emotionally, to understand within themselves some of the relations between actions and emotions, and sometimes to undergo cognitive change.
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Fiction literature has largely been ignored by psychology researchers because its only function seems to be entertainment, with no connection to empirical validity. We argue that literary narratives have a more important purpose. They offer models or simulations of the social world via abstraction, simplification, and compression. Narrative fiction also creates a deep and immersive simulative experience of social interactions for readers. This simulation facilitates the communication and understanding of social information and makes it more compelling, achieving a form of learning through experience. Engaging in the simulative experiences of fiction literature can facilitate the understanding of others who are different from ourselves and can augment our capacity for empathy and social inference. © 2008 Association for Psychological Science.
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Summary A key aspect of social cognition is the ability to infer other people’s mental states, thoughts and feelings; referred to as ‘theory of mind’ (ToM). We tested the hypothesis that the changes in personality and behaviour seen in frontal variant frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD) may reflect impairment in this cognitive domain. Tests of ToM, executive and general neuropsychological ability were given to 19 fvFTD patients, a comparison group of Alzheimer’s disease patients (n = 12) and matched healthy controls (n = 16). Neuropsychiatric assessment was undertaken using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI). Patients with fvFTD were impaired on all tests of ToM (first-order false belief; second-order false belief; faux pas detection; and Reading the Mind in the Eyes), but had no difficulty with control questions designed to test general comprehension and memory. By contrast, the Alzheimer’s disease group failed only one ToM task (second-order false belief), which places heavy demands on working memory. Performance on the faux pas test revealed a double dissociation, with the fvFTD group showing deficits on ToM-based questions and the Alzheimer’s disease group failing memory-based questions only. Rank order of the fvFTD patients according to the magnitude of impairment on tests of ToM and their degree of frontal atrophy showed a striking concordance between ToM performances and ventromedial frontal damage. There was a significant correlation between the NPI score and more sophisticated tests of ToM in the fvFTD group. This study supports the hypothesis that patients with fvFTD, but not those with Alzheimer’s disease, are impaired on tests of ToM, and may explain some of the abnormalities in interpersonal behaviour that characterize fvFTD.
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SOLITARY INDIVIDUALS waiting for flights in an airport departure lounge were classified as either readers (engaged in recreational reading for 10 consecutive minutes) or nonreaders by an experimenter unobtrusively observing their behavior. Of the 217 subjects, 111 were classified as readers and 106 as nonreaders. Individuals classified as readers scored higher on several recognition checklist measures of print exposure that can be administered in a matter of minutes. Individuals judged to be high in print exposure-on the basis of either an inference from their airport behavior or an inference from their responses on the checklist measures-displayed more extensive vocabularies and cultural knowledge than did individuals low in print exposure. Although engagement in literacy activities was correlated with both age and education, exposure to print was a substantial predictor of vocabulary and cultural knowledge even after differences in age and education were controlled. The results, taken in conjunction with the outcomes of several related studies, suggest a more prominent role for exposure to print in theories of individual differences in cognitive development.
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This investigation of the five-factor model of personality as a correlate of mass media use was designed to validate key links in a basic model of the uses and gratifications paradigm. Survey data collected from 219 university students who kept diaries of time spent using the mass media and participating in nonmediated communication activities were submitted to canonical correlation analysis. Minutes devoted to TV viewing, radio listening, pleasure reading, and movie attendance were correlated with the five personality traits of the NEO-PI—neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The strongest relationships for mass media use were between openness and pleasure reading, extroversion and negative pleasure reading, and openness and negative TV viewing. Individuals who scored higher on extroversion and agreeableness exhibited a preference for nonmediated activities, especially conversation.
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The popular notion of identification with characters in drama is examined, and its usefulness in explaining emotional reactivity to drama is questioned. The concept of empathy is developed as an alternative, and its usefulness is demonstrated. Empathy theory is reviewed, and selected supportive findings are presented. Reflexive, acquired, and deliberate forms of empathy are distinguished as motor mimicry, empathy proper, and perspective taking. Special attention is given to conditions under which empathy reverses to counterempathy. The development of affective dispositions toward characters featured in drama is considered crucial, and the dynamics of character development are examined in terms of dispositional consequences. Empathic reactions are linked to positive affective dispositions and counterempathic reactions to negative affective dispositions. Emotional involvement with drama is explained on the basis of dispositionally controlled empathy and counterempathy.
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"Transportation into a narrative world" (Green & Brock, 2000, 2002) has been identified as a mechanism of narrative impact. A transported individual is cognitively and emotionally involved in the story and may experience vivid mental images. In the study reported here, undergraduate participants (N = 152) read a narrative about a homosexual man attending his college fraternity reunion, rated their transportation into the story, rated the perceived realism of the story, and responded to statements describing story-relevant beliefs. Transportation was positively correlated with perceived realism. Furthermore, individuals with prior knowledge or experience relevant to the themes of the story (e.g., had homosexual friends or family members, were knowledgeable about American fraternities) showed greater transportation into the story. Highly transported readers showed more story-consistent beliefs, and the positive relationship between transportation and story-consistent beliefs held for those both with and without previous relevant experience.