Can Reading Fiction Make You a Better Person? (2024)

FAQs

Can Reading Fiction Make You a Better Person? ›

So how can someone else's perspective and emotions ever become real enough for us to develop empathy? Reading fiction may provide an answer. Research suggests that fictional books may effectively be empathy-building tools, offering us the closest we can get to first-hand knowledge of someone else's experience.

It increases your ability to communicate, your ability to reason, your creativity, your ability to see connections between events. Reading is basically like doing bench presses for you mind. And reading (good) fiction is like you were doing bench presses without feeling any strain or pain.

Reading is growth

Even if you don't read a self-improvement book per se, virtually any well-written book will help you become a better person. From building your self-esteem to becoming better at decision-making, books give you the tools to cope with life's conundrums — and the ever-important Zombie apocalypse.

Research suggests that reading literary fiction is an effective way to enhance the brain's ability to keep an open mind while processing information, a necessary skill for effective decision-making.

Reading fiction helps you be more empathetic

As a result of becoming immersed in a fictional world, you become more attuned to the characters' thoughts, feelings, and ideas. And this allows you to gain more of a tolerance for empathy in real life.

Results show that fiction can have a positive impact on measures of mood and emotion, but that a process of mnemonic or cognitive consolidation is required first: exposure to fiction does not, on its own, have an immediate impact on well-being.

Reading makes you happier

Researchers have discovered that reading puts the mind into a “pleasurable trance-like state,” similar to meditation, and improves the mood considerably. In fact, regular readers have been shown to have considerably lower rates of depression and self-esteem problems than non-readers!

Consider Your Mood and Interests: If you're in the mood for creativity and storytelling, choose fiction. If you're curious about history or science or wish to develop personal skills, nonfiction is your go-to.

This phenomenon can be called "narrative transportation" — the effect of being lost in a story and feeling like you're living it. And sometimes when you're in this transported state, what happens in the fictional world can change how you think, feel and perceive the real world.

Does fiction affect real life? ›

As a child, we learn from what we are exposed to. Thus, communities teach children about values, the arts, and the sciences while they are still malleable. But, even as grown men and women, fiction can play a role in our daily lives. We sympathize with characters and their struggles which mirror ours.

Reading fiction also helps to build a child's emotional intelligence, as it exposes them to a wide range of emotions and helps them to understand and empathize with others. In contrast, self-help books can be dry, dull, and lacking in imagination.

Fact: Fiction Can Be Good For Mental Health

Being able to understand other people, places and mental states can help us build stronger connections. Neuroscience shows reading and social cognition both recruit the same part of the brain and brain functions which can develop by being stimulated when reading fiction.

Well, there could be a few reasons why you find it difficult to get lost in a good fiction book. Maybe you haven't found the right genre or author that speaks to you yet. Or perhaps you're just too busy with work, family, and other responsibilities to dedicate time to reading for pleasure.

Reading stories is a great way to see the world through the consciousness of others as they see and feel about their own viewpoint and core beliefs. This type of perspective taking can develop into a habit of mind that disposes one to have empathy toward others.

A fiction book, usually called a novel, is just one of the many forms of fiction writing. Works of fiction do not claim that a story is true. Nevertheless, these works can significantly impact their audience and, more broadly, society.

Reading fiction can introduce us to experience that is different, to the ideas, thoughts and cares of “the other.” There is good evidence that reading good fiction can teach empathy. Anthony Doerr's book shows us both the worst and the best of humankind. Cormac McCarthy shows us love in unrelentingly awful situations.