Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind

By D. Kidd, Emanuele Castano. Science, 2013

1,218 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A Good Read Theory of Mind is the human capacity to comprehend that other people hold beliefs and desires and that these may differ from one's own beliefs and desires. The currently predominant view is that literary fiction—often described as narratives that focus on in-depth portrayals of subjects' inner feelings and thoughts—can be linked to theory of mind processes, especially those that are involved in the understanding or simulation of the affective characteristics of the subjects. Kidd and Castano (p. 377, published online 3 October) provide experimental evidence that reading passages of literary fiction, in comparison to nonfiction or popular fiction, does indeed enhance the reader's performance on theory of mind tasks. Experimental evidence suggests that reading good fiction helps us to understand others. Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults. We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments 1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments 2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/212301127d8826dc29424a5ddd74f6919820d012

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Citations in the corpus

The Transportation Scale–Short Form (TS–SF) (2015, neutral): “…Gerrig & Prentice, 1991; Green & Brock, 2000), behavioral intentions and behavior (e.g., Appel & Mara, 2013), the self-concept (Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman, & Peterson, 2009; Richter, Appel, & Calio, 2014; Sestir & Green, 2010), and the theory of mind (e.g., Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mar & Oatley, 2008).”
Stories and the Promotion of Social Cognition (2018, background): “Some researchers have reported a boost in mentalizing ability after participants read stories relative to control texts (Kidd & Castano, 2013).”
Empathic reactions after reading: The role of genre, personal factors and affective responses (2015, background): “To some extent, they are also backed up by empirical evidence showing a relation between reading stories and scores on empathy measures (e.g., Mar et al., 2006, 2009; Kidd and Castano, 2013).”
Effects of Literature on Empathy and Self-Reflection: A Theoretical-Empirical Framework (2015, positive): “In an additional analysis using frequencies of various words, Kidd and Castano (2013) found that the frequency of negative emotion words was related to higher scores on ToM, while the effect of condition remained significant.”
Effects of "literariness" on emotions and on empathy and reflection after reading (2016, background): “The fact that Kidd and Castano (2013) could replicate this effect with various literary stories, suggests that there is something about “literariness” which is conducive to this empathic ability.”
The role of the arts and humanities in human flourishing: A conceptual model (2018, background): “…positive affect Psychological competencies reading of literary fiction led to higher levels of perspective taking as opposed to other types of genres (Kidd & castano, 2013) can we capture effects of the different types of topics and humanities subjects on flourishing? reading literature led to…”
How listening to music and engagement with other media provide a sense of belonging: An exploratory study of social surrogacy (2018, result): “This finding is in line with previous research showing that reading literary fiction in comparison to non-fiction augments one’s ability to detect and understand others’ emotional reactions (Kidd & Castano, 2013).”
Theory of Mind May Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models (2023, background): “ToM has been shown to positively correlate with participating in family discussions (34), the use and familiarity with words describing mental states (32, 35), and reading fiction describing mental states (36, 37).”
Empathy: a motivated account. (2014, neutral): “…le is in te nd ed so le ly fo r th e pe rs on al us e of th e in di vi du al us er an d is no t to be di ss em in at ed br oa dl y. for instance, through reading fiction, can enhance both mentalizing and experience sharing (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mar & Oatley, 2008; Mar, Tackett, & Moore, 2010).”
Evaluating large language models in theory of mind tasks (2023, background): “In humans, ToM development also seems to be supported by exposure to stories and situations involving people with differing mental states ( 38 – 41 , 57 ).”