I’ve been reading The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante and I’m deeply impressed by the depth of her novels and how much they force the (male?) reader to take on a different perspective on human relations. Perhaps to assuage my guilty conscience about the opportunity costs involved (isn’t there some psych literature I should be reading?), I found myself trying to learn about research concerning the benefits/costs of reading fiction.
It turns out that there’s quite a bit out there and I found a TICS paper by Keith Oakley claiming that people who read may improve their empathy skills and that “this effect is especially marked with literary fiction, which also enables people to change themselves.”
By the way, I found that a similar argument has been made for watching West Wing (my favourite show and perhaps a good escapist way to deal with the harsh reality of the current political climate!).
Unfortunately, it’s not all roses when it comes to empathy. In fact, Paul Bloom has been arguing against empathy because it may often make us take irrational, parochial decisions, think “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic” (see here for a popular science article in German or here for his TICS paper on this topic).
Oh well, I’ll simply enjoy the Neapolitan Quartet and get back to reading psych soon enough…
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