Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

Does reading novels evoking empathy with fictional characters really cultivate our sympathetic imagination and lead to altruistic actions on behalf of real others?

Introduction

Suzanne Keen , Thomas H. Broadus Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, is the author of Narrative Form (2003), Romances of the Archive in Contemporary British Fiction (2001), Victorian Renovations of the Novel: Narrative Annexes and the Boundaries of Representation (1998), and a volume of poetry, Milk Glass Mermaid (2006). Her book Empathy and Novel will be published in March 2007 by Oxford University Press.