Effects of Literature on Empathy and Self-Reflection: A Theoretical-Empirical Framework

By E. Koopman, F. Hakemulder. 2015

213 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Literature and Literary Theory, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/86f0ef2025f0a16025d620faf9c48c0543f57244

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Literature and Literary Theory

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The effects of reading material on social and non-social cognition (2015, background): “…appear that reading fiction—even challenging, literary fiction, which presents a sequence of character-centric events that can be seen as complex, ambiguous, and requiring more effort on behalf of the reader (e.g. Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015)—improves performance on cognitive tasks across the board.”
Effects of "literariness" on emotions and on empathy and reflection after reading (2016, background): “A possible explanation for the effect of foregrounding on empathy is that striking textual features can make one engage more with the character and the narrative world (e.g., Koopman & Hakemulder 2015; Mar & Oatley, 2008).”
Empathic reactions after reading: The role of genre, personal factors and affective responses (2015, background): “…feelings’’ (see Kneepkens and Zwaan, 1994; Miall and Kuiken, 2002), which consists of all feelings toward the narrative world, including empathy and sympathy with characters, 1 For a more extensive theoretical exploration of the issues discussed in this section, see Koopman and Hakemulder (2015).”
Different stories: How levels of familiarity with literary and genre fiction relate to mentalizing. (2017, background): “Although nearly all fiction may provide a basis for simulated social experiences (Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015; Mar & Oatley, 2008), the present findings suggest that literary fiction is most likely to prompt readers to rely extensively on ToM, leading them to more fully recruit ToM-related…”