The Relationship Between Empathy and Reading Fiction (study) - narrative vs story vs plot; language, consciousness, emotions and music (part 1).

 

The Relationship Between Empathy and Reading Fiction: Separate Roles for Cognitive and Affective Components

1. Independent Researcher, UK

1. University of Winchester, UK

Abstract

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Method (read the study at the link above)

(or pasted in below the comment)

2014

comment:

Narrative, as I'm using it here, is inexorably tied to present expressed time and is singular. I'm fairly certain (of course it's a speculation) its expression via language is tied to our inhibitory development (a smallish chunk of brain up front and left - mostly but it's more network synchrony and synchopathy, logos within logos, than... geography or anatomy...hoho -  is sort of specialized in that way and one thing that distinguishes our species.) Story - not plot - instead is by contrast not tied to the present and by its nature, plural or having time-less alternative meaning, even conflicting meanings. (Ie: in the last sentence our language would embed story to fit narrative, so one should grammatically use meanings with an s for the sentence narrative even though from the story perspective, its meaning or the meaning it wants to transmit, that would be mistaken.) 

To make it short: that distinguishing between story-narrative is important, likely I think, to in turn distinguish different expressions of empathy. This study uses existing models of two forms, called cognitive and affective. To me, that's not enough. Both forms as described would actually utilize primarily affective (narrative) representations (networks of and in) of self in their expression. (Two large ones, brain networks, are broadly defined as default and central executive. The expression of these forms of empathy would in context be more closely tied with the later.) Mirror neurons if they exist (they very likely do) and many of the systems or networks they turbo-charge are at least also connected to emotively context-ed representations that are not so abstracted, that are not directly concerned with affecting. (These many networks are always dialoging, so it's never an either/or. It emerges either/or only later hierarchically on the way to expression. You do have to eat. And fuck and love and sing and dance depending on motivation and context. Motivation, the necessity to do something, results in one-at-a-time something.) (Heavens, I left out drink.) 

It's unlikely that there are very determinate tendential differences locally regarding nearly all modern languages. Mo's (a friends) gene's are mixed like yours or mine or his mothers. Not that there might not be any tendential differences at all. But it's more the other way around: language can and does affect -that's affect, not only effect - us and him and her. And that voice they use delineates a slightly different discrete infinity in which embedding occurs, or the way information recursively integrates and is then expressed and received. As you note that voice uses elements of, actually is, poetry-music (for our brains they're quite similar, overlapped, and different from verbal language per se. And time-less.)

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As Paulette's example (?), story passes through narrative per force but the full impact of story is transmitted not so much by the narrative as by how much story avoids it, transmitting in other ways. Music-poetry reaches in without so much filter. But to engage more (directly those affective networks) and proceed, narrative is necessary, passing through an expressed real time. Fiction is more true than non-fiction in that way (using narrative but transmitting beyond it, accessing or impacting deeper, so to speak, and inherently more empathic networks. And there is a gender-modulated involvement here - recall Beth(story)?) 

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Emotions count. And you dont even need a cerebral cortex to be conscious, to feel and express living. For me, language used more as a means rather than a narrative has always jived with me and vice versa,pretty much since forever. But it's rare in prose, all the more as the decades pass. Fewer and fewer readers appreciate it. Maybe one can use music as an example that is more easily understandable. 

 

Jazz improvization, where it might be more comparable also because of the (CNS) structures used, taken on loan (using many of the same pathways as spoken language) and because of those frontal circuits that musicians must inhibit if they are deeply motivated to...say something both to and from the gut (affective empathy it would be labelled here). Compare 2 extremes: Pat Methany and Chet Baker. Both they and those who listen to them have divergent tendencies: the former uses and reaches more the cognitive empathetic part; the later affective (even of a devastating sort.) (Below you'll hear Pat in effect copying the earlier Chet but still...unable to get...to the expression beneath the music)

Study: John Stansfield1,

Louise Bunce2

 

Research suggests that both life-time experience of reading fiction and the extent to which a reader feels ‘transported’ by the narrative are associated with empathy. This study examined these relationships further by delineating empathy into cognitive and affective components. Thirty-three participants were tested on prior exposure to fiction, transportation, and different measures of cognitive empathy, affective empathy and helping tendency. The results revealed that exposure to fiction was associated with trait cognitive, but not affective, empathy, while the experience of being transported was associated with story-induced affective empathy. Story-induced affective empathy was also associated with helping tendency. The results are discussed by considering implications for relationships between reactions to fictional worlds and reactions to real-world behaviours.

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Reading fiction can be a deeply absorbing experience. Readers commonly refer to the experience of being lost in a book (Nell, 1988), or being transported to a different world (Gerrig, 1993). However, relatively little attention has been paid to the mental processes associated with reading fiction, and how they relate to thoughts and behaviours in the real world. The current study examined the relationships among different aspects of fiction reading, i.e. life-time exposure to fictional stories and the immediate experience of being transported by a story, and two components of empathy: cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand the world from another person’s point of view and to infer beliefs and intentions, whereas affective empathy refers to the capacity to share another’s feelings and emotions (Blair, 2005).

 

Much of fiction is concerned with protagonists’ understandings and misunderstandings of the beliefs and motives of other characters and is only comprehensible if the reader is exercising cognitive empathy (Lodge, 2002; Zunshine, 2007). Affective empathy has also been proposed as an essential component of the understanding and enjoyment of fiction (Hogan, 2010). Indeed, Hogan (2010) has argued that literary representations of emotion may be ‘purer’ than those encountered in real-life, and thus have the power to enhance individuals’ affective empathic responses. In addition to the cognitive and affective empathy that is continuously exercised in ‘real-world’ social situations, it has been suggested that a separate component of empathy underlies the tendency to be transported by fictional stories and identify with their characters (Davis, 1980). An interesting question therefore arises as to the relationships between real-world practices of cognitive and affective empathy, and the ability to be transported by reading fiction.

 

Reading fictional stories has been found to be associated with the development of empathy in children, suggesting that there is an important link between the empathy felt for fictional characters and the ability to empathise with people in reality (Adrian, Clemente, Villaneuva & Rieffe, 2005; Aram & Aviram, 2009; Mar, Tackett & Moore, 2010). Harris (2000) has suggested that there is continuity between children’s and adults’ engagement with fictional and real worlds. However, relatively few studies have examined the relationship between reading fiction and expressions of real-world empathy in adults.

 

In two studies by Mar and colleagues, college students were tested on lifetime prior exposure to fictional texts and measures of empathy. Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, dela Paz and Peterson (2006) found that the amount of fiction students had previously read predicted performance on a measure of empathy requiring participants to infer mental states from photographs of people’s eyes (the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ [RME] test; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste & Plumb, 2001). The correlational design of this study meant that inferences could not be drawn in relation to the causal link between exposure to fiction and performance on the empathy related task. Thus, it is, as of yet, unclear as to whether fiction-reading was the cause of greater empathic ability, whether people high in empathy are more drawn to read fiction, or whether there was an alternative unidentified variable that explained the association. One alternative explanation, that individual differences in personality were causally related to both exposure to fiction and empathy, was eliminated by Mar, Oatley and Peterson (2009). They found a positive relationship between exposure to fiction and ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ despite controlling for the Big 5 personality variable of ‘openness to experience’.

 

Mar et al. (2006) did find a measure of social ability that was negatively associated with exposure to fiction: the Interpersonal Perception Task -15 (IPT-15; Costanzo & Archer, 1989). This task measures the ability to decode social relationships represented in video clips using non-verbal cues, and was found by Costanzo and Archer (1989) to be highly correlated with peer ratings of social skills. These results suggest that there may be a more complex relationship between reading fiction and empathy.

One possibility is that reading fiction has a stronger relationship with cognitive empathy, than with affective empathy. According to Lodge (2002), a characteristic of literary fiction is that it is able to provide detailed moment-by-moment descriptions of the inner thoughts and feelings of its protagonists, thereby providing rich opportunities for readers to experience cognitive empathy. In contrast, other fictional forms such as plays and films can offer representations of the external behaviours of their characters, but are less suited to the representation of internal thoughts and feelings. Based on the findings of their research study, Mar and colleagues (2006) suggested that an association between fiction-reading and cognitive empathy might explain why the RME measure positively correlated with exposure to fiction. They argued that the RME test is a measure of cognitive empathy insofar as it relies on matching a verbal descriptor to a depiction of a mental state, but does not necessarily require the participant to share the emotion concerned. The IPT-15, however, is more concerned with decoding embodied emotional cues and might therefore be taken as a measure of affective empathy, thus explaining why it was not associated with prior exposure to fiction. Thus, an aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that prior exposure to the reading of fiction is positively associated with cognitive empathy abilities but not with affective empathy.

 

While the Mar et al. studies considered the relationships between prior exposure to fiction and empathy, other studies have examined empathic responses to specific fictional texts. One variable that has been found to affect the relationship between fiction-reading and empathy is termed ‘transportation’ (Johnson, 2012). Using Green and Brock’s (2000) Transportation Index (which measures the extent to which a reader has been absorbed by a story’s characters, plot and imagery) and the Affective Empathy Index (Batson, Early & Salvarani, 1997), Johnson (2012) found a positive relationship between affective empathy and transportation in college students. That is, participants who reported being absorbed in a story also subsequently reported higher levels of emotions that have been associated with affective empathy, such as warmth, compassion and sympathy. Furthermore, there was a positive relationship between the level of affective empathy and performance in a subsequent ‘real-world’ helping task in which participants were presented with an opportunity to help pick up some pens that had been ‘accidentally’ dropped by the researcher. This study was also correlational in design, meaning that no inferences could be drawn about a causal link between transportation and affective empathy. However, immediately prior to reading the story, baseline measures of trait tendencies to be transported by fiction and to feel affective empathy were taken. By controlling for these, Johnson was able to strongly suggest that there may be a direct link between reading-induced experiences of affective empathy and helping behaviour, unaccounted for by an underlying tendency to be easily transported or experience affective empathy.

 

In addition to this, Bal and Veltkamp (2013) found that participants who were assigned to read a fictional story showed increased levels of affective empathy, but only when highly transported. Participants assigned to read a piece of non-fiction showed no increase in empathy. Both the Johnson (2012) and Bal and Veltkamp (2013) studies found associations between transportation and affective empathy, but did not specifically test for a relationship between transportation and cognitive empathy. Thus, an additional aim of the current study was to test for associations between transportation and both cognitive and affective empathy.

 

Considering the previous studies, it may be overly simplistic to propose a single relationship between reading fiction and empathy. Individual differences in reading fiction can be examined in relation to how much someone has read over their life-time, and also how transported they have been by a particular story. Furthermore, individual differences in empathy can be assessed in relation to both cognitive and affective empathy. The present study was thus designed to explore individual differences in life-time exposure to reading fiction, transportation, and cognitive and affective empathy. In line with Mar et al. (2006, 2009) it was hypothesised that exposure to fiction would positively relate to cognitive empathy but not necessarily to affective empathy. Conversely, in line with Johnson (2012) and Bal and Veltkamp (2013) it was predicted that transportation by a piece of fiction would relate to levels of affective empathy and subsequent helping tendencies, but not necessarily to exposure to fiction or cognitive empathy.

 

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