14 DAY TRIAL // It is possible for a person to both develop and perfect so-called mind-reading skills, specialists with The New School for Social Research in the US argue.
In a paper published in the journal Science a couple of days ago, the researchers maintain that, according to their investigations into the matter at hand, said skill can be obtained by reading literary fiction on a fairly regular basis.
Specifically, they argue that people who read such fiction sooner or later come to develop a set of skills and thought processes that enable them to navigate complex social relationships easier than people who do not pick up a book every once in a while do.
Live Science tells us that the researchers reached this conclusion after carrying out a series of experiments with the help of volunteers.
Thus, some of these people were asked to read a piece of literary fiction. Others were asked to read popular fiction, and a third group was made to read a piece of nonfiction.
Once all the volunteers were done reading, the specialists subjected them to a series of tests intended to shed light on their so-called theory of mind, i.e. a set of skills that people rely on in order to understand the emotional states of those around them.
“Experiment One showed that reading literary fiction, relative to nonfiction improves performance on an affective ToM [theory of mind] task. Experiments Two through Five showed that this effect is specific to literary fiction,” the researchers write in their paper, as cited by EurekAlert.
Ph.D. candidate David Comer Kidd and Professor Emanuele Castano suspect literary fiction has this effect on people due to the fact that it challenges and engages them in ways that other types of fiction do not.
“Features of the modern literary novel set it apart from most bestselling thrillers or romances. Just as in real life, the worlds of literary fiction are replete with complicated individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration,” the researchers say.
“We see this research as a step towards better understanding the interplay between a specific cultural artifact, literary fiction, and affective and cognitive processes,” they go on to argue.