A Theory of Narrative Empathy

By Suzanne Keen. 2006

537 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We are living in a time when the activation of mirror neurons in the brains of onlookers can be recorded as they witness another’s actions and emotional reactions. 1 Contemporary neuroscience has brought us much closer to an understanding of the neural basis for human mind reading and emotion sharing abilities—the mechanisms underlying empathy. The activation of onlookers’ mirror neurons by a coach’s demonstration of technique or an internal visualization of proper form and by representations in television, film, visual art, and pornography has already been recorded. 2 Simply hearing a description of an absent other’s actions lights up mirror neuron areas during fMRI imaging of the human brain. 3 The possibility that novel reading stimulates mirror neurons’ activation can now, as never before, undergo neuroscientific investigation. Neuroscientists have already declared that people scoring high on empathy tests have especially busy mirror neuron systems in their brains. 4 Fiction writers are likely to be among these high empathy individuals. For the first time we might investigate whether human differences in mirror neuron activity can be altered by exposure to art, to teaching, to literature. This newly enabled capacity to study empathy at the cellular level encourages speculation about human empathy’s positive consequences. These speculations are not new, as any student of eighteenth-century moral sentimentalism will affirm, but they dovetail with efforts on the part of contemporary virtue ethicists, political philosophers, educators, theologians, librarians, and interested parties such as authors and publishers to connect the experience of empathy, including its literary

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/00e519ac4b72e6e45d23032904c53de0ea7dfcc5

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Psychiatry and Mental health

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience (2008, background): “It trains us to extend our understanding toward other people, to embody (to some extent) and understand their beliefs and emotions (Keen, 2006; Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, dela Paz, & Peterson, 2006; Zunshine, 2006), and ultimately to understand ourselves (Moore & Macgillivray, 2004).”
Effects of Literature on Empathy and Self-Reflection: A Theoretical-Empirical Framework (2015, unknown): “Recently, however, scholars have pleaded to distinguish the two, with »empathy« designating experiencing emotions perceived as similar to the character(s) (»feeling with«), and »sympathy« designating feeling concern for another without feeling what the other feels (»feeling for«; e. g., Busselle/Bil”
Positive Empathy and Prosocial Behavior: A Neglected Link (2016, methodology): “In 1909, the word “empathy” was first used by Edward B. Titchener, who translated the term from the German word “Einfühlung,” which literally means “feeling into” (Keen, 2006; Lipps, 1903; Titchener, 1909).”
Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes (2009, result): “That these two measures are correlated is interesting, and congruent with various theories put forward relating empathy to fiction (e. g., Keen, 2006; Mar and Oatley, 2008; Zillmann, 1994).”
The pleasure of unadulterated sadness: Experiencing sorrow in fiction, nonfiction, and "in person." (2009, background): “Consistent with this finding, Keen (2006) argued that nonfiction readers operate in a skeptical and investigative mode, whereas fiction readers become immersed in the lives of the characters.”