CHAPTER 31
David Kidd
Abstract
From the child considering whether the pigeon should drive the bus to the literature professor pondering the thematic threads in Toni Morrison’s novels, people are transfixed by stories. Yet, they know relatively little about how engaging with stories might shape who they become. This chapter explores recent research investigating the effects of reading fiction on cognitive and intellectual development, personal development, and social development. In each domain, attention is given to how qualities of texts and readers may interact to yield seemingly contradictory effects. The chapter concludes with examples of practical applications of reading programs and suggestions for addressing key limitations and gaps in the research literature.
Key Words: reading, fiction, critical thinking, social cognition, personal identity
Reading, particularly fiction, has long attracted praise and skepticism, with commentators and scholars debating the potential benefits and possible pitfalls of engaging with texts (Gottschall, 2013; Keen, 2007). As researchers continue to grapple with how to answer basic questions about the psychological consequences of reading, there is substantial evidence that ordinary readers believe the activity has obvious and, at times, transformative effects (Carlsen & Sherrill, 1988; Sabine & Sabine, 1983; Nell, 1988). Merga (2017) describes a large-scale study in which over 1,000 self-described avid readers responded to the question, “Why do you read books?” (Merga, 2017, p. 149). Their answers, mostly about fiction, fell into nine broad categories: perspective-taking, acquiring knowledge, personal development, mental stimulation and critical thinking, entertainment and pleasure, escape and relief, social connectedness, creative inspiration, and developing language skills.
Although perhaps skewed, these reasons suggest an array of benefits to reading. Some of these may be mutually reinforcing, others antagonistic; some may be valued in some contexts and viewed with alarm in others; and some may depend on different features of the text and reader than others. Figuring out how and for whom reading promotes different elements of human flourishing is a challenge that has been increasingly met by relying on psychological theories and methods.
Psychological Models of Engaging with Narrative Fiction
Much contemporary research on the psychology of engaging with fiction is informed by the theory that fiction supports rich simulations of life, particularly its social aspects (Mar & Oatley, 2008; Oatley, 1999, 2016). In this view, we use the same processes to make sense of fictional worlds that we use to navigate the real one. As Mar and Oatley observe, just as a flight simulator is designed to help pilots hone their abilities in a compelling but consequence-free environment, works of fiction allow readers to explore experiences and perspectives with little risk.
An early review of neuroimaging studies supported this view, suggesting that understanding narratives calls on a range of psychological capacities in addition to those required for language processing (Mar, 2011; Spreng, Mar, & Kim, 2009). Drawing on subsequent research, Jacobs and Willems (2018) propose a neurocognitive poetics model suggesting links between narrative processing and internally generated cognition, particularly perspective taking and situation model building. The simulation account also coheres with what readers say about their experiences: most of the reasons for reading cited by avid readers (Merga, 2017) imply simulation (e.g., perspective-taking, escape, creative inspiration) and can be easily understood in terms of internally generated cognition (e.g., personal development, critical thinking) and language processing.
The simulation account of engaging with fiction provides a productive framework for thinking about how reading might develop knowledge and refine psychological processes, and it has received broad empirical support (for reviews see, Oatley, 2016; Oatley & Djikic, 2018). Researchers have also articulated extensions of the simulation account to clarify how variation in aspects of the text, reader, and their interaction corresponds with differences in the nature and effects of simulated engagement. This sort of research often draws on work of cognitive literary theorists (e.g., Culpeper, 2001; Miall & Kuiken, 1994; Zunshine, 2006) to investigate the relations of textual features and different psychological processes. For example, some work has considered the role of the subject matter of texts in determining how reading influences social beliefs and attitudes (e.g., Black, Capps, & Barnes, 2018; Fong, Mullin, & Mar, 2015). Other research has explored reader engagement and immersion, or narrative transportation (e.g., Appel & Richter, 2007; Gerrig & Rapp, 2004), the impacts of structural or formal elements of texts (e.g., Kidd & Castano, 2013; Koopman, 2016; Miall & Kuiken, 1999), and the importance of reader characteristics (e.g., Carpenter, Green, & Fitzgerald, 2018; Miall & Kuiken, 2002).
A number of recently proposed models integrate several of these lines of research to account for extant findings and refine hypotheses. Mar (2018) emphasizes the dual importance of the content of works of fiction (or narrative, more broadly) and the types of processing activated by story engagement. Mar (2018) observes that there are at least three sets of cognitive processes that may be engaged by fiction. The first two, theory of mind and empathy, have each received more attention from empirical researchers than the third, which Mar (2018) describes as memory of social schemas. Mar’s (2018) point is similar to Kidd and Castano’s (2013, 2017b, 2019) proposal that fiction may vary in the extent to which it evokes individuating social cognition (e.g., theory of mind; folk psychology) versus categorizing or schematic cognition (e.g., stereotyping; folk sociology). The common thread here is a recognition that researchers must attend to the form of readers’ psychological engagement to understand the impacts of reading.
Barnes (2018) draws more attention to general features of literary reading, primarily the depth and creativity that readers bring to their engagement. Along with others, Barnes distinguishes between relatively passive and active reading, and highlights the possibility that readers can approach practically any text in an active manner, even if some texts may better scaffold or encourage active engagement. Along similar lines, Koopman and Hakemulder (2015) emphasize the importance of role-taking, defamiliarization, and stillness as distinct factors in narrative engagement.
These theoretical views converge in supporting the position that there are many ways of reading fiction, and these likely have different psychological bases and effects. Broadly, they distinguish between non-reflective, schema-driven reading and reflective, defamiliarizing reading. Relatively non-reflective reading can be understood as corresponding to high levels of narrative transportation (Green & Brock, 2000), in which readers likely experience fluency and mastery of schema-consistent plots and characters (Gerrig & Rapp, 2004), narrative emotions (Mar, Oatley, Djikic, & Mullin, 2011), identification with characters (Gabriel & Young, 2011), and, generally, a sense of being fully immersed in a fictional world. In contrast, reflective reading may be typified by defamiliarization (Miall & Kuiken, 1994), iterative interpretation (Zunshine, 2015; Kidd & Castano, 2019), the experience of aesthetic as well as narrative emotions (Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015), and critical thinking (Djikic, Oatley, & Moldoveanu, 2013; Koek, Janssen, Hakemulder, & Rijlaarsdam, 2016, 2019).
The degree to which a reader experiences one or both of these forms of engagement, according to all of these models, is likely to vary depending on a complex interaction of features of the text, the reader, and the context. These interactions are far from being understood, but distinguishing between relatively non-reflective and reflective engagement provides a simple framework for thinking about the different sorts of ways fiction appears to impact readers. In the following sections, this approach will be adopted while presenting research investigating the ways in which reading fiction may cultivate psychological development in intellectual, personal, and social domains.
Cognitive and Intellectual Development
One of the ways reading fiction may support human flourishing is by cultivating literacy, critical thinking, and general knowledge. Reading, particularly fiction-reading, presents opportunities to learn new words and encounter a wide range of stylistic devices (Mar & Rain, 2015). In addition, the cognitive demands of reading fiction, such as interpreting stylistic elements and evaluating narrators, may promote critical thinking, and even in fiction, readers encounter information about real places, people, and things (Mar & Oatley, 2008; Mar, 2018).
Verbal Abilities
Early research revealed robust positive relations of print exposure and linguistic abilities (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992; Stanovich, West, & Harrison, 1995; West, Stanovich, & Mitchell, 1993; West & Stanovich, 1991; see Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998, and Mol & Bus, 2011 for reviews). The link between reading and linguistic abilities is thought to be bi-directional and mutually reinforcing, such that reading improves verbal abilities, which in turn make more complex texts accessible to readers (Mol & Bus, 2011). Cunningham and Stanovich (1997) found that, controlling for verbal ability assessed ten years prior, print exposure predicted the development of verbal abilities and general knowledge (for a replication, see Sparks, Patton, & Murdoch, 2014). Subsequent research has shown that exposure measures limited to fiction are positively related to verbal abilities (Acheson, Wells, & MacDonald, 2008), and may account for most of the effects of general print exposure (Mar & Rain, 2015). There is, however, a need for research regarding the role of reading fiction in the development of literacy skills throughout adulthood, as most extant work focuses on children and adolescent readers.
Critical Thinking
There is some evidence that reading fiction can promote the development of critical thinking skills. Djikic et al. (2013) proposed that fiction affords readers a simulated environment in which the absence of consequences reduces the motive to make quick judgments and stick by them. In Djikic et al.’s study, participants who were assigned to read literary short stories, compared to those assigned to read essays, reported lower levels of need for cognitive closure, consistent with the argument that reading fiction can promote slower and deeper processing (Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015). In a mixed-method prospective study of adolescent literature students, Koek, Janssen, Hakemulder, and Rijlaarsdam (2016) found that improvements in critical literary understanding were associated with generalized critical thinking skills. In a qualitative follow-up study, Koek et al. (2019) documented ways in which literary reading evoked critical thinking abilities, including de-automatization and text (re)construction. Although they make no causal claims, Koek et al. observe that the results support the theoretical connection between defamiliarizing literary reading and critical thinking.
There is also evidence that other forms of engagement with fiction may have contrary effects. For example, watching television shows aimed at entertainment can increase just world beliefs (Appel, 2008), a system-justifying set of ideas associated with a high need for closure (Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004). It also seems likely that readers sometimes choose stories that conform to their expectations about the (social) world (Gerrig & Rapp, 2004), particularly if they are seeking high levels of narrative transportation or escape (Mar et al., 2011). Therefore, it may be that more reflective reading, of the sort studied by Djikic et al. (2013) and Koek et al. (2016, 2019), is most likely to cultivate critical thinking, while relatively non-reflective reading may reinforce reliance on less demanding processes.
Knowledge, Beliefs, and Attitudes
The capacity to engage in pretend-play emerges early, with children as young as two years able to recognize pretense (Friedman & Leslie, 2007), and it reflects the initial development of sophisticated meta-representational abilities that underpin readers’ compartmentalization and integration of fictional experiences into their general memories (Gerrig & Prentice, 1991). However, despite understanding the concept of fiction, readers appear to pick up and use both true and false information from stories they read (Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, 2003).
Most studies of learning from fiction focus on narrative persuasion, often in the context of clear rhetorical goals (Green & Carpenter, 2011). Work on narrative persuasion typically uses short, highly evocative stories with overt themes. Participants might be asked about attitudes toward a different social group that has been positively portrayed in a story (e.g., Mazzocco, Green, Sasota, & Jones, 2010). Or, they might read a story highlighting the negative effects of tobacco use and then are asked about their intentions to quit (e.g., Dunlop, Wakefield, & Kashima, 2010). Generally, the extent of story-consistent changes is driven by either a predisposition to be transported into the story or post-reading reports of transportation (Green & Brock, 2000; Green & Carpenter, 2011). More generally, story-consistent changes may be greatest for readers less prone to critical thinking, suggesting that non-reflective reading may be most conducive to learning (for better or worse) from fiction (Appel & Malečkar, 2012).
The apparent credulity of readers, however, is not unwarranted. Scholars have argued that storytelling may be the oldest and most effective way of communicating social knowledge (Gottschall, 2013; Dunbar, 2014; Smith et al., 2017), and many avid readers are explicit about seeking information from works of fiction (Merga, 2017). Vicary and Fraley (2010), for example, present evidence of a reinforcing cycle in which works of fiction meet and reinforce perceived needs for domain-specific information. However, research aimed at understanding the sorts of knowledge readers seek, why they do so, and what they learn, is limited.
The research reviewed here broadly supports the idea that reading fiction presents opportunities for developing cognitive and intellectual skills, such as literacy and critical thinking, and that it may also help inform readers about the world around them, especially its social aspects. There remains, though, a clear need for additional research, particularly studies addressing adult populations and frameworks that incorporate factors related to differences in how readers are engaging with stories.
Personal Development
Drawing on decades of studying life narratives, McAdams (2019) argues that we use stories to represent ourselves and that these influence our development. Although the centrality of narrative to identity has been disputed (Strawson, 2004), research has documented the development of narrative life stories in adolescence (Fivush, Habermas, Waters, & Zaman, 2011) and has explored the implications of autobiographical narratives to well-being (Adler, Lodi-Smith, Philippe, & Houle, 2016; Fournier, Dong, Quitasol, Weststrate, & Di Domenico, 2018). Generally, this work suggests that we use narratives to make sense of our experiences, who we are, and what our future might be like. To do this, we rely on narrative structures and elements that we acquire socially, and reading fiction may be one mechanism through which these are shared (e.g., McAdams, 2019; Fivush et al., 2011). In 2010, Mar, Peskin, and Fong noted a lack of direct evidence linking exposure to fiction with the structure or coherence of life stories, and that lacunae largely remain (Brokerhof, Bal, Jansen, & Solinger, 2018).
There is more direct evidence that engaging with fiction can change how people understand themselves. In a recent review, Brokerhof et al. (2018) propose that reading literature can affect identity through three pathways: a personal pathway that includes processes of identification and observation of others, a cultural pathway including the acquisition of narrative techniques (e.g., themes, plots), and a reflective pathway characterized by gaining self-awareness and considering multiple possible selves. Each of these pathways appears to include more and less reflective variants.
For example, there is apparently conflicting evidence that reading fiction can lead to idiosyncratic (e.g., Djikic, Oatley, & Carland, 2012; Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman, & Peterson, 2009) and relatively uniform (e.g., Isberner, Richter, Schreiner, Eisenbach, Sommer, & Appel, 2018) changes in self-concept. Djikic et al. (2009) found that participants who read a Chekhov story changed their responses to a personality questionnaire more than those who read a documentary account of the same events, but in idiosyncratic ways. In contrast, other studies demonstrate story-consistent changes. Gabriel Young (2011) showed that reading stories about vampires and wizards led participants to more readily associate related terms (e.g., fangs, potions) with themselves, and cross-cultural developmental research suggests that early engagement with stories can shape the evaluation of seemingly basic emotions like happiness (Tsai, Louie, Chen, & Uchida, 2007). Other research has yielded similar effects, suggesting that narrative transportation and identification with characters can lead to story-congruent modification of self-concepts (e.g., Isberner et al., 2018; Krause & Appel, 2020; Richter, Appel, & Calio, 2014) and attitudes (e.g., Vezzali, Stathi, Giovannini, Capozza, & Trifiletti, 2014).
Alongside evidence of assimilation of personality characteristics, there are indications that readers sometimes contrast themselves with people they encounter in fiction. Krause and Appel (2020) found that participants reporting low transportation into a story about a diligent student and who found themselves challenging aspects of the story tended to report themselves as less conscientious, just as their more transported peers reported greater conscientiousness. The counterarguing observed by Krause and Appel (2020) may reflect a response similar to defamiliarization, as both entail challenging or reflecting on overt meanings in a text. This more reflective reading may decrease the likelihood of story-consistent changes, even as it supports shifts in self-perception.
Despite the centrality of storytelling to theories of identity development, the extant empirical research is limited, particularly concerning long-term accruing effects. Nonetheless, it appears that reading characterized by defamiliarization is most likely to activate the reflective pathway identified by Brokerhof et al. (2018). However, both forms of engagement might operate along the personal and cultural pathways, just in different ways. While transporting reading may promote assimilation to norms embodied by fictional characters (e.g., Richter et al., 2014), more reflective, defamiliarizing reading may encourage their critical evaluation and perhaps rejection (e.g., Krause & Appel, 2020). Both forms of engagement may have similarly varied effects on the cultural pathway. For example, McAdams (2019) proposes that the themes and structures of redemption stories in American culture are widely shared across popular narratives, providing a template that individuals can use to understand their own experiences.
There are strong theoretical reasons and some empirical evidence that reading fiction can encourage adoption of story-consistent values and self-conceptions. There are also good reasons to believe it can support idiosyncratic exploration of unfamiliar identities and life trajectories. These contrasting effects can be at least partially reconciled by integrating the distinction between relatively reflective and more transporting engagement with the model of personality change described by Brokerhof et al. (2018). However, much additional research is needed to evaluate the many theoretical claims about the effects of reading on personality.
Social Development
The effects of reading fiction on social cognition have received recent attention from psychologists, though this work has yielded few conclusive findings. The fact that human (or human-like) characters and relationships are central to most works of fiction (Mar & Oatley, 2008) has led scholars to propose that parsing the social content of fiction is one of the greatest demands and pleasures of reading (e.g., Bruner, 1986; Zunshine, 2006). In this view, reading is a deeply social activity, and there is evidence that readers (and viewers) of fiction can even develop intense (parasocial) relationships with characters that help them meet their basic social needs (Gabriel, Valenti, & Young, 2016; Gabriel, Read, Young, Bachrach, & Troisi, 2017; see also Mar, Oatley, & Peterson, 2009). Consistent with the simulation account, readers interpret and engage with the social content of fiction much as they do with the real social world. Along the way, they may encounter useful information about people and social relations (e.g., Johnson, Carroll, Gottschall, & Kruger, 2011) and refine psychological processes associated with social engagement (e.g., Kidd & Castano, 2013).
Early evidence suggesting that encountering fictional social worlds affects social cognition was presented by Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, dela Paz, and Peterson (2006). Participants were asked to complete checklist-based measures of their prior exposure to fiction and nonfiction, as well as measures of social cognition and, in a subsequent study, personality factors (Mar et al., 2009). In both studies, exposure to fiction (but not nonfiction) was positively related to a measure of theory of mind (ToM), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001), even after accounting for individual differences in trait openness to experience and fantasy-proneness, a construct related to transportability (in Mar et al., 2009). This finding has been replicated numerous times in a range of populations and using variations of the author-checklist method of assessing exposure to fiction (Mumper & Gerrig, 2017), and it has received indirect support from neuroimaging studies (Jacobs & Willems, 2018; Tamir, Bricker, Dodell-Feder, & Mitchell, 2015).
Experimental methods have also been used to test whether reading fiction can improve performance on tests of ToM. An initial set of five experiments comparing RMET performance among participants previously randomly assigned to read literary fiction with those assigned to read nonfiction (one experiment), nothing at all (two experiments), and popular fiction (four experiments) yielded results suggesting that only reading literary fiction produces short-term improvements in ToM (Kidd & Castano, 2013). This general finding suggests that the greater sociocognitive complexity and defamiliarizing features of literary, relative to popular genre fiction, prompted stronger recruitment of ToM processes.
However, both the findings and motivating theory presented by Kidd and Castano (2013) were quickly challenged by two sets of replication studies that failed to find a reliable positive effect of reading literary fiction on RMET performance, but also used different methods (Panero, Weisberg, Black, Goldstein, Barnes, Brownell, & Winner, 2016; Samur, Tops, & Koole, 2018). A reanalysis of one study for which data were available, Panero et al. (2016), suggested that the replication failure was at least partially due to failure to ensure that participants read the texts (Kidd & Castano, 2017a; though see Panero, Weisberg, Black, Goldstein, Barnes, Brownell, & Winner, 2017). A high-fidelity, large-scale exact replication of the first experiment, that comparing nonfiction and literary fiction reading, however, failed to find any evidence of a positive effect of reading literary fiction in this paradigm (Camerer et al., 2018).
Despite these failed replications, there is evidence that reading literary fiction, compared to popular genre fiction, can improve RMET performance. In a very close, though not exact, replication study, van Kuijk, Verkoeijen, Dijkstra, and Zwaan (2018) found a strong positive effect of reading literary fiction. In addition, in a series of pre-registered exact replications of the final, most advanced experiment reported in Kidd and Castano (2013), two studies yielded inconclusive results (based on applications of a small-telescopes test; Simonsohn, 2015) and one replicated the expected effect with an effect size consistent with prior results (Kidd & Castano, 2019). Taken together, these findings suggest that the key results of Kidd and Castano (2013) can be replicated, but the effects are small and vulnerable to even slight methodological changes. There is more robust correlational evidence that exposure to literary fiction, but not popular genre fiction, is positively associated with performance on tests of ToM (Kidd & Castano, 2017b; Kidd & Castano, 2019), bolstering the position that ToM abilities are more strongly linked to more reflective literary reading.The experimental effects do not provide a very convincing case, on their own, that reading literary fiction reliably makes people noticeably more adept at inferring others’ mental states, but the converging correlational evidence suggests consistent differences in the ways that literary and popular genre reading relate to social cognition. Direct evidence that literary fiction introduces greater socio-cognitive complexity than popular genre fiction was found in experiments in which participants rated characters in popular genre fiction as more stereotypic and predictable than those in literary fiction (Kidd & Castano, 2019). This finding suggests that readers of popular genre fiction may use more efficient schema-based social cognitive skills to interpret the relatively simple social content typical of fiction often populated with stock characters and formulaic plots. Accordingly, works of popular genre fiction may be most likely to affect social cognition by reinforcing or modifying the social scripts and stereotypes readers use to make sense of the real world when not motivated to rely on more demanding processes (for dual-process models of social cognition, see Fiebich & Coltheart, 2015; Swencionis & Fiske, 2014).
Additional research indicates that fiction can operate on aspects of social cognition other than ToM, particularly stereotypes and other social beliefs. For example, Appel (2008) found that people who watch more fictional television, which tends to be highly formulaic, have stronger beliefs in a just world. Other research has shown that reading stories depicting outgroup members in a positive way can improve explicit and implicit attitudes toward the groups as a whole (Husnu, Mertan, & Cicek, 2018), particularly when the readers are highly transported into the story (Johnson, 2013; Johnson, Jasper, Griffin, & Huffman, 2013). These findings are consistent with research showing that even indirect positive contact with other groups can improve intergroup attitudes, making fiction a potential tool for combating prejudice (Murrary & Brauer, 2019). Research into stereotyping and attitude change (e.g., Yzerbyt, Coull, & Rocher, 1999) suggests that immersed, rather than reflective, readers may be most likely to demonstrate altered beliefs. These mechanisms could either reduce or increase prejudice, depending on how groups are portrayed and the degree to which readers are willing to engage with stories that challenge their beliefs. However, insofar as the process of individuation inhibits the activation or application of stereotypes (Swencionis & Fiske, 2014), more literary reflective reading may also reduce prejudice, though not by substantially modifying the content of schematic representations.
Research investigating the effects of fiction on ToM and perceptions of groups has not generated definitive proof of causal effects on either, though there is initial meta-analytic evidence of positive correlational (Mumper & Gerrig, 2017) and experimental (Dodell-Feder & Tamir, 2018) effects on ToM. As researchers continue to explore other dimensions of social cognition, such as moral judgments (Black, Capp, & Barnes, 2018), prosocial behavior (Johnson, 2012), and even empathy for animals (Małecki, Pawłowski, Cieński, & Sorokowski, 2018), systematic manipulation of different forms of engagement will help clarify the mechanisms leading to change. Readers ranging from the anonymous respondents in the study described by Merga (2017) to the former US president Barack Obama (Obama & Robinson, 2015) have identified reading fiction as a way to better understand their social world and the people who inhabit it. Research is still needed to empirically evaluate these claims.
Conclusion
The novel is a fairly recent development in human history, even if it has storytelling roots that stretch to the earliest days of our development. Whether this invention has provided a tool (or toolkit) for honing key psychological capacities or meeting important needs (e.g., Gottschall, 2013) is a theoretically well-motivated question that has earned increasing attention from empirical researchers. Currently, much of this research has been aimed at understanding the contributions of reading fiction to intellectual, personal, and social development, yielding encouraging but often incomplete results.
Sorting out contradictory results will require both theoretical innovation and the application of rigorous methods (e.g., adequate power, pre-registration, direct replication, longitudinal studies). This latter point is especially important given that some of the most encouraging findings, such as Bal and Veltkamp’s (2013) demonstration that being transported into a story can increase empathy and Johnson et al.’s (2013) finding that transportation can reduce implicit bias, have not been confirmed in direct replications. Other findings, such as those of Kidd and Castano (2013) that have been the subject of multiple replication attempts, have yielded more mixed results, highlighting the need for methodological improvements.
Although specific effects are often difficult to pin down, there is a growing literature documenting the benefits of engaging with literature in applied settings. In these mostly qualitative studies, effects often vary across participants, with some citing intellectual growth, others changes in self-perceptions, and others focusing on improved social connections or understanding (e.g., Longden et al., 2015; Longden, Davis, Carroll, Billington, & Kinderman, 2016). Many programs utilizing literature also involve facilitated discussions about the texts to encourage interpretation and reflection, and these elements may have independent or moderating effects on outcomes (DeVries, Bollin, Brouwer, Marion, Nass, & Pompilios, 2019).Reading programs have been deployed to improve intellectual, personality, and social flourishing with populations ranging from incarcerated adolescents and adults (Billington, 2011; Houchins, Gagnon, Lane, Lambert, & McCray, 2018) to adults with psychosis (Volpe, Torre, De Santis, Perris, & Catapano, 2015). Reading, especially in groups, can combat loneliness and provide cognitive stimulation throughout life, making fiction a potentially critical resource in helping address health challenges associated with aging (DeVries et al., 2019; Longden et al. 2016; Rothbauer & Dalmer, 2018; Rane-Szostak & Herth, 1995). Strikingly, Bavishi, Slade, and Levy (2016) found that, after controlling for a host of potentially confounding factors, that regular reading (though not exclusively fiction) is associated with greater longevity.
The research reviewed here suggests that reading fiction may support human flourishing in a wide variety of ways. Empirical research examining these effects and how readers achieve them is still nascent and far from settled, but recent years have seen an increase in inquiry that has set the foundations for more sophisticated investigations into the contributions of reading fiction to psychological development and well-being.
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