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It has been assumed that literature is good for people, but members of our research group in Toronto (Raymond Mar, Maja Djikic, and I) turned this into a question. Is literature good for people, and if so how? We have found, and others have confirmed, that reading literature enables people to improve their empathy and understanding of others. Measures of general reading, controlling for such effects as level of education, have been found to improve nearly all verbal abilities, and even to extend the lifespan with this latter effect occurring probably by improving social understanding and social support. All these effects have recently been found to be due largely to reading fiction. Other effects of fiction have included the prompting of concern for human rights, and reduction of prejudice. Reading literary art (again mostly fiction) also enables us to change ourselves, by means of what Kierkegaard called "indirect communication." This kind of communication differs in functions from those usually assumed for written and video fiction, which include instruction, persuasion, and entertainment. It enables people to experience their own emotions and think their own thoughts, rather than having emotions and thoughts specified by authors.

 

Keith Oatley is a cognitive psychologist and novelist. His research is on the psychology of emotions and the psychology of fiction. He is the author of seven books of psychology, that have included Such stuff as dreams: The psychology of fiction (Wiley). Among his recent books is The Passionate Muse: Exploring emotion in stories (Oxford University Press) an original novella with psychological commentaries. The first of Keith’s novels, The Case of Emily V. (Secker and Warburg), won a Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel. His most recent novel is Therefore Choose (Goose Lane Publications). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

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