Article published In:
Transdisciplinary Approaches to Literature and EmpathyEdited by Paul Sopčák, Massimo Salgaro and J. Berenike Herrmann
[Scientific Study of Literature 6:1] 2016
► pp. 42–58
Edited by Paul Sopčák, Massimo Salgaro and J. Berenike Herrmann
[Scientific Study of Literature 6:1] 2016
► pp. 42–58
On literary fiction and its effects on theory of mind
Storytelling is a hallmark human activity. We use stories to make sense of the world, to explain it to our children, to create communities, and to learn about others. This article focuses on fictional stories and their impact on complex sociocognitive abilities. Correlational and experimental evidence shows that exposure to fiction recruits and hones our ability to represent others’ mental states, or theory of mind (ToM). Experimental studies suggest this effect is specific to literary fiction. Using a unique set of texts, we replicate the finding that literary fiction improves ToM performance. Consistent with the expectation of greater focus on characters in literary fiction, linguistic analysis of the texts revealed that the literary texts contain more markers of reflective function, a sophisticated manifestation of ToM. Further analysis showed the prevalence of markers of reflective function partially mediated the effect of literary fiction on ToM performance.
References
Acheson, D. J., Wells, J. B., & MacDonald, M. C.
(2008) New and updated tests of print exposure and reading abilities in college students. Behavior Research Methods, 40(1), 278–289. 
Adams R. B. Jr, Rule, N. O., Franklin R. G. Jr, Wang, E., Stevenson, M. T., Yoshikawa, S., … Ambady, N.
(2010) Cross-cultural reading the mind in the eyes: an fMRI investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(1), 97–108.
Apperly, I. A.
(2012) What is “theory of mind”? Concepts, cognitive processes and individual differences. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(5), 825–839.
Baker, C. A., Peterson, E., Pulos, S., & Kirkland, R. A.
(2014) Eyes and IQ: A meta-analysis of the relationship between intelligence and “Reading the Mind in the Eyes”. Intelligence, 441, 78–92.
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I.
(2001) The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(2), 241–251.
Black, J. E., & Barnes, J. L.
(2015a) The effects of reading material on social and non-social cognition. Poetics, 521, 32–43.
Black, J., & Barnes, J. L.
(2015b) Fiction and social cognition: The effect of viewing award-winning television dramas on theory of mind. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(4), 423–429.
Bormann, D., & Greitemeyer, T.
(2015) Immersed in virtual worlds and minds effects of in-game storytelling on immersion, need satisfaction, and affective theory of mind. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(6), 646–652.
Bouchard, M. A., Target, M., Lecours, S., Fonagy, P., Tremblay, L. M., Schachter, A., & Stein, H.
(2008) Mentalization in adult attachment narratives: Reflective functioning, mental states, and affect elaboration compared. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 25(1), 47.
Bowes, A., & Katz, A.
(2015) Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind. Memory & Cognition, 43(6), 953–963.
Brewer, M. B.
(1988) A dual process model of impression formation. In T. K. Srull & R. S. Wyer Jr., (Eds.), Advances in social cognition (Vol. 11, pp. 1–36). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E.
(1982) The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 116.
Culpeper, J.
(2001) Language and characterisation: People in plays and other texts. London: Longman.
DeLillo, D.
(1988) Libra. New York: Viking Press.
Dunbar, R. I.
(2003) The social brain: Mind, language, and society in evolutionary perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 321, 163–181.
Fertuck, E. A., Mergenthaler, E., Target, M., Levy, K. N., & Clarkin, J. F.
(2012) Development and criterion validity of a computerized text analysis measure of reflective functioning. Psychotherapy Research, 22(3), 298–305.
Field, A.
(2009) Discovering statistics using SPSS (3rd ed.). London: Sage.
Fiske, S. T., Lin, M., & Neuberg, S. L.
(1999) The continuum model: Ten years later. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual-process Theories in Social Psychology (pp. 231–254). New York, NY: Guilford.
Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. E.
(1990) A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 231, pp. 1_74). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Fonagy, P., & Target, M.
(1997) Attachment and reflective function: Their role in self-organization. Development and Psychopathology, 9(4), 679–700.
Fonagy, P., Target, M., Steele, H., & Steele, M.
(1998) Reflective-functioning manual, version 5.0, for application to Adult Attachment Interviews. London, UK: University College London.
Fong, K., Mullin, J. B., & Mar, R. A.
(2013) What you read matters: The role of fiction genre in predicting interpersonal sensitivity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7(4), 370–376.
(2015) How exposure to literary genres relates to attitudes toward gender roles and sexual behavior. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(3), 274–285.
Forster, E.M.
(2002) Aspects of the novel. New York: RosettaBooks. (Original work published 1927)
Galinsky, A. D., & Moskowitz, G. B.
(2000) Perspective-taking: Decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 708–724.
Gerrig, R. J., & Rapp, D. N.
(2004) Psychological processes underlying literary impact. Poetics Today, 25(2), 265–281.
Green, M. C., Kass, S., Carrey, J., Herzig, B., Feeney, R., & Sabini, J.
(2008) Transportation across media: Repeated exposure to print and film. Media Psychology, 11(4), 512–539.
Hakemulder, J.
(2000) The moral laboratory: Experiments examining the effects of reading literature on social perception and moral self-concept. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Hayes, A. F.
(2013) Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Heyes, C. M., & Frith, C. D.
(2014) The cultural evolution of mind reading. Science, 344(6190), 1243091-1–1243091-6.
Hirschfeld, L. A.
(2001) On a folk theory of society: Children, evolution, and mental representations of social groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(2), 107–117.
Hoppenstand, G.
(1998) Popular fiction: An anthology. London, UK: Longman.
Humphrey, N.
(1984) Consciousness regained. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E.
(2013) Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380.
Knox, J.
(2003) Archetype, attachment, analysis: Jungian psychology and the emergent mind. London, UK: Brunner-Routledge.
Macrae, C. N., & Bodenhausen, G. V.
(2000) Social cognition: Thinking categorically about others. Annual Review of Psychology, 51(1), 93–120.
Mar, R. A., Oatley, K., Hirsh, J., dela Paz, J., & Peterson, J. B.
(2006) Bookworm versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with personality, ability, and achievement. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(5), 694–712.
Mar, R. A., & Oatley, K.
(2008) The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(3), 173–192.
Mar, R. A., Oatley, K., & Peterson, J. B.
(2009) Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes. Communications, 34(4), 407–428.
Mascaro, J. S., Rilling, J. K., Negi, L. T., & Raison, C.
(2012) Compassion meditation enhances empathic accuracy and related neural activity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(1), 48–55.
Maskit, B., & Murphy, S.
Mergenthaler, E., & Bucci, W.
(1999) Linking verbal and non-verbal representations: Computer analysis of referential activity. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 72(3), 339–354.
Miall, D. S., & Kuiken, D.
(1999) What is literariness? Three components of literary reading. Discourse Processes, 28(2), 121–138.
Mitchell, R., & Phillips, L.
(2015) The overlapping relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind. Neuropsychologia, 701, 1–10.
Neuberg, S. L., & Fiske, S. T.
(1987) Motivational influences on impression formation: outcome dependency, accuracy-driven attention, and individuating processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(3), 431.
Pennebaker, J.W., Booth, R.J., Boyd, R.L., & Francis, M.E.
Schurz, M., & Perner, J.
(2015) An evaluation of neurocognitive models of theory of mind. Frontiers in Psychology, 61.
Singer, T.
(2006) The neuronal basis and ontogeny of empathy and mind reading: Review of literature and implications for future research. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 30(6), 855–863.
Slade, A.
(2005) Parental reflective functioning: An introduction. Attachment & Human Development, 7(3), 269–281.
Tamir, D., Bricker, A., Dodell-Feder, D., & Mitchell, J.
(2016) Reading fiction and reading minds: The role of simulation in the default network. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(2), 215–224.
Vellante, M., Baron-Cohen, S., Melis, M., Marrone, M., Petretto, D. R., Masala, C., & Preti, A.
(2013) The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test: Systematic review of psychometric properties and a validation study in Italy. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 18(4), 326–354.
Wheeler, M. E., & Fiske, S. T.
(2005) Controlling racial prejudice social-cognitive goals affect amygdala and stereotype activation. Psychological Science, 16(1), 56–63.
Wiessner, P. W.
(2014) Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(39), 14027–14035.
Young, S. G., Hugenberg, K., Bernstein, M. J., & Sacco, D. F.
(2012) Perception and motivation in face recognition: A critical review of theories of the cross-race effect. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(2), 116–142.
Zunshine, L.
(2015) From the social to the literary: Approaching Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone from a cognitive perspective. In L. Zunshine (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive literary studies (176–196). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Cited by
Cited by 29 other publications
Bracher, Mark, Deborah Barnbaum, Michael Byron, Tammy Clewell, Nancy Docherty, Françoise Massardier-Kenney, David Pereplyotchik, Susan Roxburgh & Elizabeth Smith-Pryor
Carpenter, Jordan M., Melanie C. Green & Kaitlin Fitzgerald
Castano, Emanuele
2021. Art films foster theory of mind. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8:1 
Castano, Emanuele
2024. Less Is More: How the Language of Fiction Fosters Emotion Recognition. Emotion Review 16:2 ► pp. 73 ff.
Castano, Emanuele, Alison Jane Martingano, Pietro Perconti & Burcu Arslan
2020. The effect of exposure to fiction on attributional complexity, egocentric bias and accuracy in social perception. PLOS ONE 15:5 ► pp. e0233378 ff.
Castano, Emanuele, Maria Paola Paladino, Olivia G. Cadwell, Valentina Cuccio & Pietro Perconti
2021. Exposure to Literary Fiction Is Associated With Lower Psychological Essentialism. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Castano, Emanuele, Jessica Zanella, Fatemeh Saedi, Lisa Zunshine & Luca Ducceschi
2024. On the Complexity of Literary and Popular Fiction. Empirical Studies of the Arts 42:1 ► pp. 281 ff.
Chlebuch, Natasha, Thalia R. Goldstein & Deena Skolnick Weisberg
Dahy, Faten Abdelaziz & Khaled Mostafa Karam
2021. Potentials of Empathetic Stimuli in Creative Nonfiction: Zimbardo’sThe Lucifer Effectand Danner’sTorture and Truth. English Studies 102:4 ► pp. 468 ff.
Das, Abhilasha & Moosath Harishankar Vasudevan
2022. Reading Patterns, Engagement Style and Theory of Mind. Psychological Studies 67:2 ► pp. 252 ff.
De Mulder, Hannah N. M., Frank Hakemulder, Rianne van den Berghe, Fayette Klaassen & Jos J. A. van Berkum
2017. Effects of exposure to literary narrative fiction. Scientific Study of Literature 7:1 ► pp. 129 ff.
Deane, Paul, Swapna Somasundaran, René R. Lawless, Hilary Persky & Colleen Appel
2019. The Key Practice, Building and Sharing Stories and Social Understandings: The Intrinsic Value of Narrative. ETS Research Report Series 2019:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Denham, A. E.
2024. Empathy & Literature. Emotion Review 16:2 ► pp. 84 ff.
Eekhof, Lynn S., Kobie van Krieken & Roel M. Willems
2022. Reading about minds: The social-cognitive potential of narratives. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 29:5 ► pp. 1703 ff.
Fertuck, Eric A., Naomi Dambreville, Diana Diamond, Devika Duggal & Jeffrey K. Erbe
2021. Referential Activity Differentially Mediates Expression of Positive and Negative Emotions in Borderline Personality Disorder. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 50:1 ► pp. 155 ff.
Gustafsson, Anna W, Per Johnsson, Kajsa Järvholm, Katarina Bernhardsson, Torbjörn Forslid & Anders Ohlsson
Kidd, David & Emanuele Castano
2019. Reading Literary Fiction and Theory of Mind: Three Preregistered Replications and Extensions of Kidd and Castano (2013). Social Psychological and Personality Science 10:4 ► pp. 522 ff.
Lenhart, Jan, Tobias Richter, Markus Appel & Raymond A. Mar
2023. Adolescent leisure reading and its longitudinal association with prosocial behavior and social adjustment. Scientific Reports 13:1
Merga, Margaret K & Catherine Ferguson
2021. School librarians supporting students’ reading for pleasure: A job description analysis. Australian Journal of Education 65:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Nikolajeva, Maria
2019. What is it Like to be a Child? Childness in the Age of Neuroscience. Children's Literature in Education 50:1 ► pp. 23 ff.
Oatley, Keith & Maja Djikic
2018. Psychology of Narrative Art. Review of General Psychology 22:2 ► pp. 161 ff.
Schwering, Steven C., Natalie M. Ghaffari-Nikou, Fangyun Zhao, Paula M. Niedenthal & Maryellen C. MacDonald
2021. Exploring the Relationship Between Fiction Reading and Emotion Recognition. Affective Science 2:2 ► pp. 178 ff.
Stewart, Suzanne L. K. & Julie A. Kirkham
2022. Predictors of Individual Differences in Emerging Adult Theory of Mind. Emerging Adulthood 10:2 ► pp. 558 ff.
Turner, Rose & Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau
Vaziri, H., L. Tay, M. G. Keith & J. O. Pawelski
2019. History, literature, and philosophy: A systematic review of positive functioning. The Journal of Positive Psychology 14:6 ► pp. 695 ff.
Veneziano, Edy & Ageliki Nicolopoulou
2019. Introduction to narrative, literacy and other skills. In Narrative, Literacy and Other Skills [Studies in Narrative, 25], ► pp. 21 ff.
Wimmer, Lena, Gregory Currie, Stacie Friend & Heather J. Ferguson
2021. The effects of reading narrative fiction on social and moral cognition. Scientific Study of Literature 11:2 ► pp. 223 ff.
Wimmer, Lena, Layla El-Salahi, Hon W. J. Lee & Heather J. Ferguson
2023. Narrativity and Literariness Affect the Aesthetic Attitude in Text Reading. Empirical Studies of the Arts 41:1 ► pp. 231 ff.
Wimmer, Lena, Stacie Friend, Gregory Currie & Heather J. Ferguson
2021. Reading Fictional Narratives to Improve Social and Moral Cognition: The Influence of Narrative Perspective, Transportation, and Identification. Frontiers in Communication 5
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.