Reading Empathy

Can Empathy Be Improved Through Literary Fiction? Reading is an important tool in language development in children. As they grow older and reach secondary school it evolves into looking deeper into the themes and motifs of the narratives studied. This maturation of concepts helps individuals identify complex ideas and possibly aid in developing empathy. According to Scientific American’s article Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy (2013), researchers have found evidence that suggests that reading literary fiction may improve a reader’s ability to grasp what others think or feel. “...this may be the first empirical evidence linking literary and psychological theories of fiction” (Chiaet, 2013). The theory focuses on how

Literary fiction improving a soft skill like empathy is explained by suggesting that books awarded enough literary merit to be considered into the category are superior in showing fleshed out characters relationships and struggles. “Although the settings and situations are grand [in genre fiction], the characters are internally consistent and predictable, which tends to affirm the reader’s expectations of others” (Chiaet, 2013). The theory uses research performed by a social psychologist Emanuele Castano and David Kidd, a PhD candidate, as its main pillar in the argument on improving the capacity to empathize. During five studies a varying number of participants were given excerpts three different categories; genre fiction, literary fiction, or no work at all. The individuals were then given a test that is used to measure how well they could analyze scenarios that facilitate empathy. The result showed that the test takers given the literary fiction did have a marked improvement; thus, implying an improvement for empathy overall. The theory may sound more convincing from such tests results but there are holes in the research that makes it still only defined by