1.3 Stories and social cognition

The idea that reading provides a window into the minds of fictional characters seems obvious, after all the author can literally state to the reader what the character is thinking. What may seem more surprising is that reading can actually help us see into the minds of real people! Not literally of course, but research has suggested that reading about fictional characters can increase our capacity to interact effectively with other people in the social world outside of books. Socio-cognitive ability refers to ‘one’s ability to perceive, interpret and respond to social information’ (Dodell-Feder and Tamir, 2018, p. 1713), where ‘socio’ relates to social interactions and ‘cognitive’ relates to the processes that take place in our brains. In their research, Dodell-Fayer and Tamir re-analysed a broad range of research which had been carried out in this area by other research teams (using what is called a meta-analysis) concluding that there is a causal effect of reading fiction on improving social-cognitive ability. However, they argued the reasons for this effect remain unknown. It might be that readers of fiction are able to practice social interactions through reading, or it might be that concrete information or knowledge about how to interact socially is transmitted through reading.

The suggestion that the reader is actually practising social interactions, requires a level of engagement with the story in which the reader is immersed in the world of the story to the extent that they might actually feel as if they are part of what is taking place. The degree to which individuals get involved in the story worlds that they read about is a phenomenon that psychologists call ‘transportation’.