What does social skills have to do with fictional characters?

In general, reading is a lonely activity. Certainly, every night, many people push small children in with enchanting bedtime stories. (Apparently, my favorite as a toddler was called “The White Cat.” Of course, the old thread, a cat, had to drop its head before it turned into his prince, but let’s drop it and move on.) But most of the time, when we step into a fictional world, we do so ourselves. Even if someone quietly reads the same book next to you, you are still plunging into that imaginary realm solo.

But,Explorers are interested On whether identifying the inner world of a constructed character leads to improved abilities to understand people in real life. Previous work revealed that Reading fiction was once associated with greater social perceptions. I also wrote about it In the post years ago. But in the end, A study that was later called I doubt this conclusion.

With new research With that just came out, a team of researchers looked into the link between interpersonal consciousness (i.e., how people can perceive and grasp their inner lives) and reading fiction. They saw this link in the context of continuous, regular reading and single instances of reading. They also compared to reading and watching movies, but they didn’t expect either to lead to social harmony.

The results revealed that reading fiction and watching film clips have nothing to do with social perception. Researchers also found no link between social perceptions and film-watching tendencies. However, reading fiction on a daily basis was associated with greater social perceptions.

Why is social perception related to reading, but not watching movies? The researchers looked at how people have different experiences depending on whether they read or watch fiction, but they had no predictions about what they found beforehand. Researchers found that when people watch the film, they felt more powerful emotions and were more pondering. When they read fiction, they visualized more.

The researchers speculated that when people actually imagine it rather than sitting and watching it, they might have a deeper and better encounter with the fictional world of the story. In line with this, in another analysis, the team found that people who had better experiences in the narrative world tended to consume more fiction afterwards. Researchers pointed out that when people have rich experiences in stories, they may come back for more, which may lead to regular steps into fictional worlds. In the case of reading, this may pave the way for increased social awareness.

Of course, as the researchers pointed out, they address a variety of questions and methodological issues on this topic. In the meantime, the evidence suggests that reading appears to be lonely with the world around us, but we are getting along well with friends in fictional lands.