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Every week, The Thread tackles your book questions, big and small. Ask 

Can reading fiction really make you more empathetic?

The connection between reading fiction and recognizing other people's emotions is a favorite topic for scientists: Several studies over the last decade have found a connection between the two.

 published in "Science" found that subjects were more adept at discerning the emotions of people in photographs 

 reading works of literary fiction. They found no similar boost after people read nonfiction or — and here's the tricky distinction — pop fiction.

, published this year by the same researchers, aimed to confirm that: The empathy boost comes from reading literary fiction but not pop fiction or genre fiction. 

But how do you separate the literary from the pop? The study put authors like Louise Erdrich, Harper Lee, Toni Morrison and others who had worn big-name awards in the literary camp, and authors like Danielle Steele and Gillian Flynn in with pop. 

What's the difference? Why doesn't genre fiction — thrillers, romance and more — spark the same reaction? Is it the amount of time that literary fiction spends in characters' heads? Does genre fiction value plot over emotional development? There's no objective line between what's literary and what's pop, which complicates the study's conclusion.

And the very idea of literary fiction as a separate category is controversial. In a 2006 interview, novelist John Updike skewered the term.

Even the authors of the study themselves were quick to stress that this does not mean literary fiction is "better" in any way from pop fiction. David Kidd, one of the researchers behind the study, told 

Kidd and his research partner, Emanuele Castano, both agree that more research is needed into the precise way that fiction affects the brains of readers.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Tracy Mumford

Author

A new study claims that reading literary fiction can increase people's ability to understand others' emotions. But what about reading genre fiction?

Can reading boost your empathy? Depends on what you read, study says

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