Reading and Empathy

[Waymore]

I’ve heard in various places of research that shows a correlation between reading fiction, especially literary fiction, and empathy.

It seems plausible prima facie. I can think of no better way to occupy another person’s head space than by reading a great writer. But as we all know, appearances can be deceiving.

I’m curious if others have experiences that confirm or deny the relationship between reading literature and being empathetic. Are English departments hotbeds of caring? Or are bookworms just as self centered as the rest of us?

[Patx2]

I think if someone, an adult has never developed a sense of empathy for others, no amount of literature will change that. I think with kids, we can use literature to get them thinking about empathy. That being said, I am not familiar with the study at all.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Patx2

I think if someone, an adult has never developed a sense of empathy for others, no amount of literature will change that. I think with kids, we can use literature to get them thinking about empathy. That being said, I am not familiar with the study at all.

I’m not familiar with the study, either, but you could be confusing cause and effect. It could mean that reading increases empathy. But it could also mean that people with greater empathy are more likely to enjoy reading.

[Thudlow_Boink]

Here are links to some relevant articles:

Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy

Does reading fiction make you a better person?

HOW READING FICTION INCREASES OUR CAPACITY FOR EMPATHY

Just anecdotally, I really do think that reading has increased my own empathy and understanding of how other people think and feel.

[Waymore]

Reading Tolstoy, I felt like I came as close as possible to knowing what it was like to be another person. I’ve had a lesser version of that experience reading lesser authors. Whether that has led to increased empathy I can’t say with any definitiveness.

But conversely, reading Lolita I saw what it was like to be in the head of someone who was very good at justifying immoral behavior. Everybody should read Nabokov in my opinion, but somebody with less than noble intentions could learn a few things from Humbert.

[The_wind_of_my_soul]

I don’t have any data to back this up, just thoughts. I think the more you understand a person’s situation, the more you can empathize with them. Reading a book from the viewpoint of someone from a different culture, social class, religion, political view, etc. would be one way to expose yourself to the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of other people. But that only goes as far as you do. I don’t envision someone being more empathetic to Christians if they don’t read any Christian literature, or more empathetic to poverty-stricken populations if you don’t read books about impoverished families/communities, just to name two examples. And of course, the flip side is that there are other ways to be exposed to that culture besides reading fiction. I could see why there would be a correlation between reading fiction and empathy, but I think the root cause is the cultural exposure, not the act of reading.

[AHunter3]

The same kind of people who tend to care about people in real life tend to care about people they are reading about (whether the book be fiction or nonfiction), and because they care the book is interesting to them and they read more and with enthusiasm.

[Patx2]

@Darren_Garrison

I’m not familiar with the study, either, but you could be confusing cause and effect. It could mean that reading increases empathy. But it could also mean that people with greater empathy are more likely to enjoy reading.

Great point! Thanks!

[clairobscur]

@Waymore

Reading Tolstoy, I felt like I came as close as possible to knowing what it was like to be another person. I’ve had a lesser version of that experience reading lesser authors. Whether that has led to increased empathy I can’t say with any definitiveness.

But conversely, reading Lolita I saw what it was like to be in the head of someone who was very good at justifying immoral behavior. Everybody should read Nabokov in my opinion, but somebody with less than noble intentions could learn a few things from Humbert.

That’s a concept I’ve always had an issue with. Tolstoi has never been a general or a woman, Nabokov has never been a sexual predator. So, I can’t see how reading them could make you understand what it is like to be one of these people. You only get to know what the author imagine these people are like, what he assumes they think, with a lot of extra elements added to make the story more compelling.

To learn what they actually think, what actually motivates them, etc…you would need to read autobiographies, memoirs, psychology essays, internet blogs, even…not fiction. Basically, a fiction author isn’t a better source to understand other people than your own imagination or reason. I’m as qualified as Tolstoi when it comes to knowing what goes on in the head of a woman in love. Tolstoi’s description will be more pleasant to read, but his opinion on the matter isn’t anymore authoritative than mine. If you want to know what motivated Anna Karenine, Kutuzov, or a recently arrested sex offender, you should ask them (or the closest equivalent to them), not Tolstoi or Nabokov.

I always thought that fiction, as a tool to understand the world, is vastly overrated (assuming that it has any value rather that being counter-productive).

[Thudlow_Boink]

@clairobscur

Tolstoi has never been a general or a woman, Nabokov has never been a sexual predator. So, I can’t see how reading them could make you understand what it is like to be one of these people. You only get to know what the author imagine these people are like, what he assumes they think, with a lot of extra elements added to make the story more compelling.

To learn what they actually think, what actually motivates them, etc…you would need to read autobiographies, memoirs, psychology essays, internet blogs, even…not fiction.

That would be a good argument if your goal is to understand what it is like to be a woman or a general or a sexual predator. You read Tolstoy if your goal is to understand what it’s like to be Anna Karenina.

That is, you’re not learning to understand a specific type of person, but a specific other individual, even if that individual is a fictional character. You’re inhabiting a different point of view than your own.

Basically, a fiction author isn’t a better source to understand other people than your own imagination or reason. I’m as qualified as Tolstoi when it comes to knowing what goes on in the head of a woman in love.

Is your imagination as good as Tolstoy’s?

And if it is, how did it get that way? How did it even occur to you to imagine what goes on in the head of another person, and how did you develop your abilities to do this? As I understand it, this is what reading fiction helps with: it’s not about acquiring factual knowledge so much as developing your mental/emotional muscles of empathy and understanding and imagination. At least, the articles I linked to upthread seem to me to support this idea.

…literary fiction … temporarily enhanced a skill known as theory of mind, the ability to imagine what might be going on in someone else’s head.

literary fiction helps people practice empathy because of its complexity, too. Because it requires more mental processing, readers of literary fiction are tasked with interpretation or critical thinking. Literary fiction, they posit, has the power to “disrupt our stereotypes”; what’s more, it is full of “complicated individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration.”

Literary fiction, that is, requires of us the same kinds of interpretive tasks that we undertake when engaging with other people.

That said, I think there is a lot of value in reading “autobiographies, memoirs, psychology essays, internet blogs,” and things like that, too.

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

@Thudlow_Boink

That would be a good argument if your goal is to understand what it is like to be a woman or a general or a sexual predator. You read Tolstoy if your goal is to understand what it’s like to be Anna Karenina.

That is, you’re not learning to understand a specific type of person, but a specific other individual, even if that individual is a fictional character. You’re inhabiting a different point of view than your own.

Is your imagination as good as Tolstoy’s?

And if it is, how did it get that way? How did it even occur to you to imagine what goes on in the head of another person, and how did you develop your abilities to do this? As I understand it, this is what reading fiction helps with: it’s not about acquiring factual knowledge so much as developing your mental/emotional muscles of empathy and understanding and imagination. At least, the articles I linked to upthread seem to me to support this idea.That said, I think there is a lot of value in reading “autobiographies, memoirs, psychology essays, internet blogs,” and things like that, too.

I was formulating a reply mentally while reading the post you’re responding to. By the time I got to the end I knew just what I was going to say.

Then I read your post and realized there was no need to reply–you covered the waterfront and better than I would have said it!

[Hilarity_N.Suze]

English departments are not hotbeds of caring. I would actually say the opposite.

[WhyNot]

@clairobscur

That’s a concept I’ve always had an issue with. Tolstoi has never been a general or a woman, Nabokov has never been a sexual predator. So, I can’t see how reading them could make you understand what it is like to be one of these people. You only get to know what the author imagine these people are like, what he assumes they think, with a lot of extra elements added to make the story more compelling.

To learn what they actually think, what actually motivates them, etc…you would need to read autobiographies, memoirs, psychology essays, internet blogs, even…not fiction. Basically, a fiction author isn’t a better source to understand other people than your own imagination or reason. I’m as qualified as Tolstoi when it comes to knowing what goes on in the head of a woman in love. Tolstoi’s description will be more pleasant to read, but his opinion on the matter isn’t anymore authoritative than mine. If you want to know what motivated Anna Karenine, Kutuzov, or a recently arrested sex offender, you should ask them (or the closest equivalent to them), not Tolstoi or Nabokov.

I always thought that fiction, as a tool to understand the world, is vastly overrated (assuming that it has any value rather that being counter-productive).

True, but moving the goalposts. The OP isn’t asking about “understanding the world,” but empathy. Empathy is defined as, “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”

If I read actual interviews or case studies of child molestors, I’m horrified. The detachment and cold calculating maneuvers they report do the very opposite of making me empathetic. They make me want to run away screaming after I set them on fire.

Nabokov’s *Lolita *makes me uncomfortable, to be sure, but it doesn’t make me want to run away. His writing makes me want to know more, and in knowing more, I come to empathize. By the end (actually, for specifically Lolita, somewhere in the middle), I feel empathy for the characters. Whether or not that’s the same as understanding what real child molesters are like is a different subject.

But as for the OP, I think we’ve got to be more specific. Are we talking about developing empathy for fictional characters, or whether reading fiction makes one more empathetic in the real world? I think the first I would answer, reading fiction makes one empathic to fictional characters, but I don’t know that it does so any better than well crafted video games or movies. The second I don’t know.

[JohnT]

ETA: Whynot, it seems the question is “does reading fiction enable empathy in real-life interactions?” At least that’s how I’m answering the OP…

Anecdote != Data and all that…

My wife, who reads a LOT of philosophy and no fiction, never understands people or their motivations.

Myself, who reads a lot of fiction and no philosophy, have very little problem understanding people, their undercurrents, what they are saying and NOT saying. The number of times I’ve been asked “how did you know that?” about somebody from my wife is in the hundreds. Easy.

“Their marriage is in trouble.”
“Oh, no. No it’s not. They’ve been together for 18 years!”

5 months later, divorce.

“How did you know?”
“Simple. At the party they hosted, they didn’t look at each other, they talked in clipped tones to each other, and the four times Dave referred to Laura, every single time he referred to her as ‘she’, and, God, it was just tense between them. You didn’t catch that? Like I said: In trouble.”

OTOH!!!

My wife is an only child. No siblings, doted on. Never really had to learn to read people as a kid.

I was the youngest of four. Learned to watch the older kids, avoid their mistakes, and pick up on their social successes (getting out of trouble, getting stuff from Dad, the sort of things that matter to a 6yo). Familial politicking was a thing in our family, and I was pretty good at it.

So… rambling discourse coming to an end… I think that reading can help with empathy and can definitely help you understand situations that are not available within our lives, but I’m pretty sure that in our case, the difference in empathy between my wife and I lie within our childhood experiences and not necessarily my habit of reading fiction.

Though it helps.

(OR, you know, what Darren said.)

(BTW, I don’t necessarily think that empathy=sympathy. You can be a empathetic asshole and sociopath, right? How many monsters have been described as “charming”? Wouldn’t somebody who is good at psychological torture be, almost by definition, empathetic - otherwise, how would they know what buttons to push?)

[chaika]

That would be a good argument if your goal is to understand what it is like to be a woman or a general or a sexual predator. You read Tolstoy if your goal is to understand what it’s like to be Anna Karenina.

Exactly. Readers respond to Tolstoy because he creates unique, specific characters. We may be able to glean quite a bit about the social mores and cultural expectations for women (and men) in 19th century Russia through reading Tolstoy, but his novels are not Guides to Understanding Women (Tolstoy’s own didacticism notwithstanding). Anna Karenina is a complete person, a beautifully drawn character, not a cardboard cutout meant to stand for Woman.

I do think that reading fiction can help develop empathy. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we must empathize with every fictional character. The example of Lolita is a good one. As a reader, I don’t feel the tiniest shred of sympathy or empathy for Humbert, despite his rhetorical attempts to win over the reader. But one of the most stunning achievements of Lolita, in my opinion, is Nabokov’s ability to allow the reader to see Lolita the character far more clearly than Humbert does, even though Humbert is the narrator. We can see and empathize with Lolita, a vulnerable child who is at the mercy of a monster.

[WhyNot]

@JohnT

(BTW, I don’t necessarily think that empathy=sympathy. You can be a empathetic asshole and sociopath, right? How many monsters have been described as “charming”? Wouldn’t somebody who is good at psychological torture be, almost by definition, empathetic - otherwise, how would they know what buttons to push?)

For every person who thinks empathy is one thing and sympathy another, it seems there’s another person who defines them exactly the opposite. So frustrating. Do ya feel me? That’s empathy. Or maybe sympathy.

[Nava]

@JohnT

My wife is an only child. No siblings, doted on. Never really had to learn to read people as a kid.

I was the youngest of four. Learned to watch the older kids, avoid their mistakes, and pick up on their social successes (getting out of trouble, getting stuff from Dad, the sort of things that matter to a 6yo). Familial politicking was a thing in our family, and I was pretty good at it.

So… rambling discourse coming to an end… I think that reading can help with empathy and can definitely help you understand situations that are not available within our lives, but I’m pretty sure that in our case, the difference in empathy between my wife and I lie within our childhood experiences and not necessarily my habit of reading fiction.

Yeah, my youngest brother did the whole “learn from older brother’s mistakes” quite well (then again, Middlebro’s mistakes could be quite spectacular without ever getting the police involved) but when he comes to reading for pleasure he’s more likely to grab an essay than fiction. I can see that there would be a correlation, but not so much a causation in either direction as a self-feedback loop.

Different people would rather think about possible situations, learn about the world, etc. in different ways. And it goes beyond the whole “listen, read, watch, do”; it’s also which kind of narratives you prefer. People who enjoy putting themselves in the shoes of a character will be more likely to read (or watch, or listen to) fiction than essays; which characters you like to put yourself in will be a big factor in which specific fiction you like; and, those books which present case studies to explain sociological or economic stuff are attempts at bridging the gap between the explanation of the social science being presented and the people who’d rather hear stories.

[JohnT]

@WhyNot

For every person who thinks empathy is one thing and sympathy another, it seems there’s another person who defines them exactly the opposite. So frustrating. Do ya feel me? That’s empathy. Or maybe sympathy.

“Empathy” is the intellectual understanding of a person’s motivations, drives, desires, etc.

“Sympathy” is the possible emotional resonance caused by empathy.

Here’s a story that might help you (and, hell, myself) understand the differences as I see it:

You walk into your restaurant at 4 in the morning to begin breakfast prep for opening at 6am. As you enter the back, you surprise a guy who is robbing the place.

At this point, you have empathy. You understand the situation, the consequences of his actions, the limited options available to the robber (do I flee? Attack? Talk my way out of this shit?). Whether or not you’ve seen this on TV, read it in a book, heard about stories like this from your mother, whatever, you have an empathy, an intellectual understanding, of the other person and their probable mental and emotional makeup at this time.

Fortunately for you, he decides to talk his way out of this shit (even more fortunate was that this was a robbery of opportunity - had he planned it, he would’ve had a gun.) Talks to you about his hungry kids, his sick wife, etc, to the point where he wears you down (I mean, it could be true. His coat is so shabby!) so that you just say “Get the hell out of here.”

You sap, you just showed sympathy to a guy who was robbing you.

But he was empathetic too, and during his spiel he was watching you and modifying his story to bring forth those visual cues that indicated you were buying it, that he was convincing you to transform your intellectual empathy into an emotional sympathy.

---

In the above, both parties showed empathy, an understanding of the other person’s thoughts, emotions, and possible decisions to be made. But only one showed sympathy, displaying an emotional resonance to the other.

Of course, half the Board will descend upon me telling me I’m wrong, but that’s how I look at the difference between the two words.

[clairobscur]

@Thudlow_Boink

That would be a good argument if your goal is to understand what it is like to be a woman or a general or a sexual predator. You read Tolstoy if your goal is to understand what it’s like to be Anna Karenina.

That is, you’re not learning to understand a specific type of person, but a specific other individual, even if that individual is a fictional character. You’re inhabiting a different point of view than your own.

The poster I was answering to seemed to imply that reading fiction allows you to understand the mindset of a specific type of people : *"But conversely, reading Lolita I saw what it was like to be in the head of someone who was very good at justifying immoral behavior. "
*

He wasn’t in the head of someone who is very good at justifying immoral behavior, he was in the head of Nabokov imagining how it might be like to be in the head of such people.

Is your imagination as good as Tolstoy’s?

My imagination is irrelevant if we’re talking about understanding the mindset of actual people. It might even be detrimental.

[Riemann]

@JohnT

(…You can be a empathetic asshole and sociopath, right? How many monsters have been described as “charming”? Wouldn’t somebody who is good at psychological torture be, almost by definition, empathetic - otherwise, how would they know what buttons to push?)

This aspect of psychopathy has never made sense to me. High up in any clinical description of psychopathy is “impaired empathy”. Yet fictional portrayals of psychopaths so often portray them as seeking pleasure from the suffering of others, going so far in extreme cases as to abduct people (presumably a risky endeavor) for the purpose of torturing them. Is the typical fictional portrayal simply wrong? It makes no sense to me that somebody lacking empathy would care about the suffering of others. They would be indifferent, they might manipulate and “steamroll” other people to achieve their selfish ends, but why would somebody lacking empathy care to elicit a state of mind (suffering) in someone else for its own sake?