ACADEMIA Letters

Psychology and Narrative

Keith Oatley, University of Toronto

Although psychology and literary fiction have the same subject matter—understanding human
minds and interactions—the two disciplines remain far apart. With a Latin etymology, fiction
means “something made” but then, for many psychologists this becomes “something made
up;” plays, novels, short stories, and visual media, are therefore thought of as lacking any
validity or reliability. In the other direction, in departments of literature, psychology is often
regarded as reductionist, with an interest in mechanisms, along with statistics and rocondite
technicalities.
Part of the trouble may have come from psychology as, in the first half of the Twentieth
Century in America, it was taken up with behaviorism. Even now, despite the cognitive revo-
lution of the 1950s, many textbooks say that psychology is the science of behavior. Then, in
literature, although modernist authors such as Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf approached
psychology with depictions of interior lives, post-modernism marked another departure.
What is happening now, however, may enable psychology and literary theory to draw
closer, perhaps even to accomplish some mutuality. One development from psychology is
the work of Michael Tomasello and his group who have shown that what distinguishes hu-
man beings from other mammals is not just walking upright and language, but the ability to
cooperate. Tomasello (e.g. 2019) proposed that, in evolution, this happened in two phases.
First was being able to make arrangements with others, so that one or more joint goals could
become more important than individual goals. An example is that when humans eat, we often
do so together; the joint goals involve gathering and sharing food. Chimpanzees do not do
this. Although they roam in groups, when they find a tree with fruit on, individuals take what
they can and eat it alone. The second phase was the coming of human cultures in which people
in societies could agree on how certain things were done and not done. Both of these required
that we humans became able to understand minds—other people’s and our own. Without this

Academia Letters, December 2020 ©2020 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Keith Oatley, keith.oatley@utoronto.ca

Citation: Oatley, K. (2020). Psychology and Narrative. Academia Letters, Article 110.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL110.

1
we would be unable make joint arrangements or take part in cultures. Another development,
coming from literary theory, is the work of Patrick Hogan (2003) who read stories from all
round the world that had been created before the era of European colonization. He found that
three kinds, all based in emotion, were sufficiently common as to amount almost to human
universals. The first is the love story, in which two young people long to unite, but are opposed
by a powerful older person. Second is the story of anger, in which one person is in charge, and
another seeks to depose him or her; the result is conflict and sometimes reconciliation. Third
is a story of a society that no longer functions so that suffering occurs; the cause is diagnosed
by someone who undertakes self-sacrifice of a kind that enables the society to function again.
As we engage with such stories we are often moved empathetically and, by identifying with
their characters, we imagine how we would act in comparable circumstances.
In terms of empirical research, in the Twenty First Century, it has been found that the more
fiction we read the better are our abilities to empathize and to understand other people. Studies
by several research groups have been reviewed and theoretical proposals have been made by
Mar (2018) and Oatley (2016). Findings of associations have been followed by experiments
which confirm that the causal direction is from reading to increased empathy (e.g. Koopman,
2018).
Among authors who have offered us stories that have effects of these kinds have been
Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and George Eliot. But it’s not only fic-
tion that can increase empathy: comparable effects can derive from biography and memoir.
This set can be thought of as “life narratives.” Jerome Bruner (1986) suggested that nar-
rative a distinctive mode of thought that enables us to understand others and ourselves. It
contrasts with paradigmatic thought by which we understand aspects of the physical world.
He suggested, too, that narrative’s subject matter is human or human-like intentions and the
vicissitudes they meet; he might have added that these vicissitudes typically prompt emotions,
in characters, listeners, and readers.
Writers of fiction and other life narratives do not generally make things up. They arrange
into configurations things that most of us know. So we know that, if you love someone, you
want to be close to that person. In the love story, we can then consider what can happen if the
union of two lovers is opposed by a father or influential male suitor. We know that if another
person wants to depose you from some position, you are likely to feel angry. But what if this
person is a member of your own family? What writers do, therefore, is to suggest not just one
known thing at a time, but configurations of different kinds, in ways that can prompt reflection.
Then, as Aristotle (330 BCE/1970) said, although history tells what has happened, poetry (in
modern terms “fiction”) is a more serious activity because it suggests to us “the kind of thing
that can happen (pp. 32-33).

Academia Letters, December 2020 ©2020 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Keith Oatley, keith.oatley@utoronto.ca

Citation: Oatley, K. (2020). Psychology and Narrative. Academia Letters, Article 110.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL110.

2
 With financial cut-backs some universities have reduced departments of literature, and
sought to increase enrolments in technical courses. Recent research on effects of engaging
with life narratives indicates that this may not be helpful because, for every technical skill,
teachers and learners need to understand each other. Engaging in, thinking about, and dis-
cussing, life narratives, can enable us to do this better.

References
Aristotle. (c. 330 BCE). Poetics (G. E. Else, Trans.). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press (current publication, 1970).

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hogan, P. C. (2003). The mind and its stories: Narrative universals and human emotion.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koopman, E. M. E. (2018). Does originality evoke understanding? The relation between

literary reading and empathy. Review of General Psychology, 22, 169-177.

Mar, R. A. (2018). Evaluating whether stories can promote social cognition: Introducing the
Social Processes and Content Entrained by Narrative (SPaCEN) framework. Discourse
Processes, 55, 454-479.

Oatley, K. (2016). Fiction: Simulation of social worlds. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20,
618-628.

Tomasello, M. (2019). Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Academia Letters, December 2020 ©2020 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Keith Oatley, keith.oatley@utoronto.ca

Citation: Oatley, K. (2020). Psychology and Narrative. Academia Letters, Article 110.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL110.