Can You Improve Empathy Through Reading?

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Yes, you can! Science now says so.

Researchers David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Caetano first started the ball rolling with their landmark 2012 report “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind” (abstract here) beautifully explored in this Scientific American article by Julianne Chiaet.

To summarise, study participants were asked to read a variety of books and then given a test that measured their ability to infer and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. Those who read non-fiction or nothing had unimpressive test results. Reading popular fiction (excerpts taken from an anthology) also yielded insignificant test results. However, participants' empathy test results improved significantly when they read literary fiction (short stories taken from 2012 PEN - O. Henry Prize winners).

In 2013, researchers from Emory University found that reading a novel causes changes in the resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist for several days. Lead author and neuroscientist Gregory Berns notes: “The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist. We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

More recently, researchers found that the empathy engendered by reading was transferable to other situations. The study (abstract here) tested whether empathetic attitudes toward stigmatised groups in the Harry Potter books (such as Harry's feelings toward mudbloods) improved attitudes toward other stigmatised groups (immigrants, LGBT community, refugees). It did - but only if the child identified with Harry and only after the children were shown the connection that mudbloods, immigrants, LGBT community, refugees are all marginalised in some way.

So while non-fiction and certain types of popular fiction are less likely to improve empathy, fiction where characters are complex, ambiguous, difficult to get to know and where there is a strong narrative line may be enough like real life for us to increase our ability to empathise with different points of view.