http://psych.utoronto.ca/%7Eraymond/bio.html

Mar, a doctoral candidate in psychology at University of Toronto, shows in a recently published article that exposure to narrative fiction is positively associated with improved social abilities, a correlation not shown for non-fiction reading. Conceding that this subject has been understudied and that a causal direction has yet to be established, Mar concludes, “Should future work determine that fiction-reading interventions yield improvements in empathy, stories could prove a powerful tool for educating both children and adults about understanding others, an important skill currently under-stressed in most educational settings. If it proves to be the case that the causality of this relation is reversed—that being more empathetic predisposes people toward reading fiction—we will still have learned something interesying about fiction, and about empathic personality.”

Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley, Jacob Hirsch, Jennifer dela Paz, and Jordan Peterson, “Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds.” Journal of Research in Personality 40(5). Oct 2006: 694-712.

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

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.