Studies Show Reading Increases Empathy

As a conservative wealth management planner with DeRosa & Associates in Jamestown, Tennessee, Chester “C. Edziu” Pacana works with high-net-worth individuals, medical professionals, federal employees, and other clients to develop long-term financial strategies. Outside of his professional life, Chester Pacana pursues a diverse range of hobbies that includes hiking, traveling, and reading.

Reading has numerous benefits in addition to simply being an entertaining and informative way to spend leisure time. Besides improving brain function and decision-making, research suggests that reading a specific type of fiction can actually increase the capacity for empathy.

In 2013, researchers at The New School conducted a series of tests that measured subjects’ abilities to interpret the emotions and thought of other people, one of the hallmarks of empathy. After dividing the test subjects into several groups, the researchers assigned each group a different kind of literature to read, including nonfiction, genre fiction, and literary fiction. After the subjects read the assigned literature, each took a test that measures empathy.

The study results indicated that readers of nonfiction and genre fiction, such as books by Danielle Steel or James Patterson, scored much less impressively on the empathy test than those who read literary fiction, which is often defined as fiction that mimics reality and explores character psychology and emotion more than plot. Experts who have examined the test results suggest that readers of literary fiction develop emotional and psychological intelligence through their mental interactions with the characters on the page, and that this can be applied in the real world.