(> | Changing our Minds K 4 wes | By Keith Oatley | December 1, 2008 | 1 comment By imagining many possible worlds, argues novelist and psychologist Keith Oatley, fiction helps us understand ourselves and others. For more than two thousand years people have insisted that reading fiction is good for you. Aristotle claimed that poetry [fiction] is a more serious business than history. History, he argued, tells us only what has happened, Whereas fiction tells us what can happen, which can stretch our moral imaginations and give us insights into ourselveg-and other people. This is a strong argument for schools to continue to focus on the Iiterary arts, not just history, science, and social studies. But is the idea of fiction being good for you merely wishful thinking? The members of a small research group in Toronto have been working on the problem. We have turned the idea into questions. In what ways might reading fiction he good for you? If itis good for you, why would this be? And what is the psychological finetion of art generally? Possible selves, possible worlds | People often think that a fiction is something untrue, but this is wrong. The word derives from the Latin fingere, to make. As something made, fiction is different from something discovered, as in physies, or from something that happened, as in the news. But this does not mean itis false. Fiction is about possible selves in possible worlds. Fietton swtentel thnelatie. In terms of 21st-century psychology, we mi jon as a kind of simulation: one that runs not on ' computers, but on minds. Such mental simulation unfolds on two levels, Eanpntes | 1. The first level involves simulating the minds of other people: imagining what they are thinking and feeling, The simulation is like a watch, which is a small model that simulates the alternation of day and night as the earth rotates. Often we can’t see sun or stars, so we refer to a little model that we can carry with us, a wristwateh, Similarly, although sometimes we know what other people are thinking and feeling because they have just told us, for the most part we have to construct a mental model of the person to know what’s going on inside their heads. twnaging Whea we do this for emotions, the process is called empathy, and neuro-imaging studies suggest that when we recognize an emotion in someone else, our brains generate the same emotion. In effect, we are simulating the Indeed some genres of fiction—Tor Tee ie mystery novel —are entirely concerned with working out what characters are up to when they are trying to conceal it. Fiebien = practice Sor empathy ‘ZL The second level of simulation is about what happens when people get together. Just as computer simulations of atmospheric pressure, winds, and humidity are used to generate weather forecasts, so novels can be thought of as simulations of how people react to combinations of social forces. Near the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, For example, Jane Austen describes a ball he novel’s protagonist, Blizabeth Bennet, and her sisters are excited because they might meet potential husbands. But one of the most eligible men, Mr. Darcy, finds the proceedings provincial, and thinks they will be tedious. Austen is running a simulation in order to understand what happens in social groups when expectations clash in this kind of way. She’s offering insight into people’s lives and manners—insight that’s just as relevant to our world as to Elizabeth Bennet’s. Bale Annee or partyUnderstanding others So if fiction is a kind of simulation of our emotional and social worlds, could it be that people who read a lot of fiction are more empathic and socially intelligent than those who don’t? This is the question that we asked in a 2006 study. First we measured whether 94 participants read predominantly fiction or non-fiction. Then, to estimate their social abilities, we used two tests. One is a measure of empathy: Sinion Baron-Cohen’s “Mind in the Eyes” test. ‘The participant looks at. photos of people’s eyes—as if seen through a mail slot—and tries to guess the mental state of the photographed person. In the second test, thé Interpersonal Perception Test, participants view 15 video clips of people interacting, then answer a question about each one—for instance, “Which of the two children, or both, or neither, are offspring of the two adults in the clip?” (Our results confirmed that reading fiction is associated with increased social ability} We found that people who Fead predominantly fiction were substantially better than those who read predonfinantly non-fiction at the Mind in the Eyes test, and somewhat better at the Interpersonal Perception Test. But could it be that the personality characteristics of more socially intelligent people incline them to read fiction? To help find an answer to that question, Raymond Mar used a fiction story and a non-fiction article from The (New Yorker, and randomly assigned people to read one or the other. Mar gave all the readers an analytical reasoning task in a multiple choice format and a social reasoning test in the same format with questions about } the emotions, beliefs, and intentions of characters in social scenarios. The result; The two sets of readers had similar analytical reasoning skills, but the short-story readers showed a stronger understanding of social situations than the essay readers. How do we explain these results? My colleagues and I think it's a matter of expertise. Fiction is principally about the difficulties of selves navigating the social world. Non-fiction is about, well, whatever it is about: selfish genes, or how to make Mediterranean food, or whether climate changes will harm our planet. So with fiction we tend to become more expert at empathizing and socializing. By contrast, readers of non-fiction are likely to become more expert at genetics, or cookery, or environmental studies, or whatever they spend their time reading and thinking about. So there is evidence that reading fiction improves our social abilities, But does it affect our emotions and personality? ‘This was the question behind a different kind of study due to be published this year. We randomly assigned 1¢ people-to zead eithera literaty short story or a version Before and after they read the text, we measured readers” personalities Usiiig-w'standard-personality-test.—— ‘The literary story was “The Lady with the Little Dog,” by Anton Chekhov, who is generally acknowledged as the world’s greatest short story writer, Itis about Dmitri Gomov, and a lady, Anna Sergueyevna, whom he sees walking with her little dog. They are both alone, on vacation at a seaside resort. They are both married to other people, but they begin an affair. At the end of their vacation they part. But their feelings for each other grow, and both are shocked to discover how much more important these feelings are than anything else in their lives. ‘They encounter many difficulties, and overcome some of them. The story ends with this; “.., their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning.”R ae seu ea ‘Aft you have read the entire article and annotated the third section, answer the following questions. 1. Whatare the main takeaways from this article? What is the author trying to say? What are the most important points? (This is really only one question. I have rephrased it three ways to help you understand what I’m asking. List atleast 3 main takeaways.) Thad Retin good: Foy yor ° iM givin, they Thiele. \ pete Wak Wing 7 o ; Seatea’! aby 4 ie etek creat v 2.” Why do you think I asked you to read this article? (Be as detailed and specific as you can. Ifyou can answer this question in one sentence, expand upon that one reason.) T thine tot yoo axed us ~ don} We de reac. Erni ake eles thodk “re tg iy Gena Por ve the Fick Vor |‘The version in a non-fiction format was written as a courtroom report of divorce proceedings. It has the same characters and events, and some of the words, of Chekhov's story. Itis the same length and reading difficulty. Importantly, the readers of the non-fictional account reported that they found it just as interesting, though not as, attistic, as Chekhov's story. ‘We found that the personality traits of readers of Chekhov's story changed more than those of the readers of the courtroom account. The changes in personality were not large, but they were measurable. They were different from the changes of belief spurred by a piece of writing meant to be persuasive, which tend to be all in the same direction as intended by the writer. Instead, Chekhov's readers changed in different directions, with each change unique to the particular reader, mediated by the emotions that each individual felt while reading. Why? We believe that as people read Chekhov's story, they experienced empathy with the protagonists and identified with them so that each reader, in his or her own way, became a bit more like them, or decided not to think in the same ways as the characters. When we read “The Lady with the Little Dog,” we can be both ourselves and Gomov or Anna. Through stories, selfhood can expand, ‘My colleagues and I also believe that readers of Chekhov's story were taken out of their usual ways of being so that they could connect with something larger than themselves, beyond themselves. This is an effect that goes beyond fiction. All art aspires to help us transcend ourselves.