Different stories: How levels of familiarity with literary and genre fiction relate to mentalizing.

Abstract

Our ability to infer and understand others' thoughts and feelings, known as theory of mind (ToM), has important consequences across the life span, supporting empathy, pro-social behavior, and coordination in groups. Socialization practices and interpersonal interactions help develop this capacity, and so does engaging with fiction. Research suggests that lifetime exposure to fiction predicts performance on ToM tests, but little evidence speaks to the type of fiction most responsible for this effect. We draw from literary theory and empirical work to propose that literary fiction is more likely than genre fiction to foster ToM, describe the development of a new method for assessing exposure to literary and popular genre fiction, and report findings from 3 samples testing the specificity of the relation between exposure to literary fiction and ToM. Results indicate that exposure to literary but not genre fiction positively predicts performance on a test of ToM, even when accounting for demographic variables including age, gender, educational attainment, undergraduate major (in 2 samples), and self-reported empathy (in 1 sample). These findings offer further evidence that habitual engagement with others' minds, even fictional ones, may improve the psychological processes supporting intersubjectivity. We discuss their implications for understanding the impacts of fiction, and for models of culture more generally.

Watching More Closely: Shot Scale Affects Film Viewers’ Theory of Mind Tendency But Not Ability

“…This is particularly important given that so many ToM measures use direct questions to assess participants’ ability to mentalize, rather than observing their uncontaminated responses. The failure to distinguish between these aspects of ToM may explain why previous research has presented conflicting and ambiguous results (e.g., Kidd and Castano, 2013, 2016, 2017; Panero et al, 2016; Pino and Mazza, 2016). In line with researchers such as Apperly (2012), Meins et al (2014), and Rosenblau et al (2015), we argue that capturing unprompted ToM responses taps in to participant’s ToM-tendency and is representative of how ToM manifests in everyday life.…”

“…Indeed the characters in the stimulus of the current study differed not only in shot scale but along other dimensions (e.g., gender, age, appearance) which may have also inhibited a transfer effect. Nevertheless it is important because it demonstrates no effect of character depiction on any general form of ToM responses, where previous researchers have reported such general ToM effects using other media formats (e.g., Kidd and Castano, 2013, 2016, 2017; Black and Barnes, 2015; Pino and Mazza, 2016). In line with this, when prompted to recount the narrative events from the perspective of the target character (question 2), all groups demonstrated a higher frequency of mental state references to the target character, with no difference between conditions.…”

“…Research has demonstrated that high quality literary fiction (Kidd and Castano, 2013, 2016, 2017; Pino and Mazza, 2016), cinematic fiction (Black and Barnes, 2015) and narrativized video-games (Bormann and Greitemeyer, 2015) can improve ToM performance. These findings, however, seem to be difficult to replicate (Panero et al, 2016; Pino and Mazza, 2016), which may be a symptom of the fact that little is known about the mechanisms (in the viewer or the media) that facilitate the increase in ToM.…”

Preservice Teacher Knowledge, Print Exposure, and Planning for Instruction

“…Given the multiple benefits associated with reading for pleasure, it seems that balanced literacy programs should include many opportunities for reading from preschool (Neuman, ; Sénéchal, LeFevre, Thomas, & Daley, ) to high school (Sparks et al., ) and beyond (Kidd & Castano, ; Mar et al., ; Mar, Oatley, & Peterson, ). Yet, during middle childhood, when the benefits from reading experience should be accumulating (Cunningham & Stanovich, ; Mol & Bus, ), motivation to read may be decreasing (Guthrie & Wigfield, ).…”

Murder by the book: using crime fiction as a bibliotherapeutic resource

“…Recent research aiming to ascertain a relationship between reading fiction and improved theory of mind (a psychological concept associated with prosocial behaviours and empathy) highlights this further 18. Fiction is split into literary and genre fiction, with crime fiction placed firmly in genre fiction, concluding that only literary fiction is associated with improved theory of mind.…”