If you are, like I am, an avid reader of novels, then you will be heartened to know that fiction is good for our mental and moral development and not just for diversion anymore. Difficult though it may be for us bibliophiles to conceive, we recognize that there are those who think otherwise. Book banners and book burners must hold the opposite view, believing that stories are harmful to society and our (particularly) moral health. You may remember Plato would banish books from his Republic(an) Utopia.
Books, movies, and TV have all been excoriated by the Morality Police. Recall Newton Minnow's 1961 condemnation of our flat screen content as “formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. In short, a "vast wasteland."
To them I say, "Pish-tush! You couldn't be wronger." And I have scientific evidence to back me up.
Please turn the page.
According to Jonathan Gottschall, writing for the Boston Globe online. . .
Until recently, we’ve only been able to guess about the actual psychological effects of fiction on individuals and society. But new research in psychology and broad-based literary analysis is finally taking questions about morality out of the realm of speculation.
Here are some discoveries:
1. Fiction molds and shapes us for the better;
2. Fiction is more effective in changing beliefs than nonfiction;
3. Happy endings make us believe the lie that the world is more just than it actually is.
Psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative.” For example, studies reliably show that when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgmentally (say, “Modern Family”), our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction.
The shift in attitudes toward gay marriage probably have more to do with the books we read and the programming we watch than political leadership. Historically, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel probably had more to do with achieving emancipation than Lincoln's reluctant championing of the cause. Conversely, "the 1915 film
The Birth of a Nation inflamed racist sentiments and helped resurrect an all but defunct KKK."
No doubt fiction is a dangerous thing. However, it's often a great thing for society.
. . .virtually all storytelling, regardless of genre, increases society’s fund of empathy and reinforces an ethic of decency that is deeper than politics.
[snip]
. . .psychologists Mar and Keith Oatley tested the idea that entering fiction’s simulated social worlds enhances our ability to connect with actual human beings. They found that heavy fiction readers outperformed heavy nonfiction readers on tests of empathy, even after they controlled for the possibility that people who already had high empathy might naturally gravitate to fiction. As Oatley puts it, fiction serves the function of “making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding.”
We see this in children as young as 4-6, who, when exposed to a large number of books and programming aimed at their age group, they exhibit a "significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people." It is empathy that raises our social consciousness to a degree of seeking and preserving more and current human rights, of believing in everyone's equality.
And it works in adults, too.
Washington & Lee psychologist Dan Johnson recently had people read a short story that was specifically written to induce compassion in the reader. He wanted to see not only if fiction increased empathy, but whether it would lead to actual helping behavior. Johnson found that the more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens — highly absorbed readers were twice as likely to help out. “In conclusion,” Johnson writes, “it appears that ‘curling up with a good book’ may do more than provide relaxation and entertainment. Reading narrative fiction allows one to learn about our social world and as a result fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior.”
Regarding point three above, poetic justice is universal in world literature. While anti-heroes abound in modern fiction, generally literature teaches us that good triumphs over evil and that it is best to lead a good life because it is rewarded while villainy is punished.
Austrian psychologist Marcus Appel. . .points out that, for a society to function properly, people have to believe in justice. They have to believe that there are rewards for doing right and punishments for doing wrong. And, indeed, people generally do believe that life punishes the vicious and rewards the virtuous. But one class of people appear to believe these things in particular: those who consume a lot of fiction.
In Appel’s study, people who mainly watched drama and comedy on TV — as opposed to heavy viewers of news programs and documentaries — had substantially stronger “just-world” beliefs. Appel concludes that fiction, by constantly exposing us to the theme of poetic justice, may be partly responsible for the sense that the world is, on the whole, a just place.
Even though we
know this is not the case (from watching news on TV), seeing the world through rose-colored glasses contributes to making society work.
It may be that Nature has selected for our affinity for stories, a worthless extravagance on the surface, because those long ago tales and myths told round the campfire defined group identity and reinforced cultural values. But what about fiction in general?
[L]iterary scholar Joseph Carroll, psychologists John Johnson and Dan Kruger, and the author of the cited article, John Gottschall asked hundreds of literary scholars and avid readers to respond to a questionnaire about 19th-century British novels. We asked them to answer questions about the motives and personalities of characters, and to classify them as protagonists or antagonists; we also asked questions that explored how readers felt about these characters. The results showed that antagonists and protagonists had sharply differentiated personalities. Antagonists were overwhelmingly driven by motives of power, wealth, and prestige. They didn’t care about winning mates, making friends, or even helping their own kin. They were loveless, emotionally isolated egomaniacs. The protagonists, meanwhile, were keen on romance and eager to help their friends and relatives.
The results won't surprise fans of fiction, especially of Dickens, Thackery, and Tolstoy.
. . .findings were consistent with the work of the anthropologist Chris Boehm, who studies social dynamics in hunter-gatherers. Boehm notes that hunter-gatherers are egalitarian, with all members of the tribe coming together to suppress bully-boy behavior in individuals. The same kind of dynamic applies in the simulated social worlds of Victorian novels. The bad guys in these ultra-“civilized” Victorian novels were like the bullies in a hunter-gatherer band, while the good guys were self-effacing and cooperative.
By simulating a world where antisocial behavior is strongly condemned and punished, these novels were promoting ancient human values. And from these books, and from fiction more broadly, readers learn by association that if they are more like the protagonists, they’ll be more likely to live happily ever after.
Reading to make me a better person is sufficient but probably not primarily reason to keep me reading novels. However, I now have evidence on my side for denying such activity is a "guilty pleasure." In fact, I'll blog less and read more.
So, good-night. I'm off to pick up where I left off in The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, whose evil anti-hero, Simone Simonini indicts society and all mankind with evil intention because he'd rather indulge in conspiracy theories and spread any lie that can earn him cash than pay attention to Dumas' more subtle messages regarding justice. Not exactly an argument for.
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Books So Bad They're Good |
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