Toronto : Reading novels may make you more empathetic, improving your ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling, a new study suggests, reports PTI.
Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, explains that we understand stories using basic cognitive functions, and there is not a special module in the brain that allows us to do this. Understanding stories is similar to the way we understand the real world.
“When people read stories we invoke personal experiences. We’re relying not just on words on a page, but also our own past experiences,” Mar said. “We often have thoughts and emotions that are consistent with what’s going on in a story,” he said.
According to Mar, social outcomes that could come out of being exposed to narrative fiction can include exposure to social content, reflecting on past social interactions, or imagining future interactions.
“We may gain insight into things that have happened in the past that relates to a character in a story, and resonates with our experiences,” Mar said.
