Effects of Literature: Understanding Others, Transforming Oneself

Sunday, February 17, 2013
Ballroom A (Hynes Convention Center)
Keith Oatley , University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Fiction is a kind of simulation, of selves in the social world: one that runs not on computers but on minds. Raymond Mar, Maja Djikic, and I, have found two kinds of effect. One is that the more fiction people read, the better is their understanding of others. A second is that reading artistic literature as compared with less artistic literature enables readers to change themselves by small increments, not all in the same direction as happens with persuasion, but in their own ways.