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Beneficial Reading

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30 November 2014

By Bronwen

The stereotype is that most people who read books on a regular basis are nerdy and extremely introverted, but a study suggests that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Readers of fiction are more used to being “emotionally transported” into a story and relating to the characters and events so therefore feel empathy more easily. This means that they’re able to be more understanding of other people’s emotions than those who don’t read regularly.

The reason that this is so beneficial to your social skills is that these readers will be more perceptive to people’s emotions and be able to respond accordingly. Fiction readers could make better friends, as they’ll be able to understand your feelings and emphasise with you.

The experiment used to deduce this consisted of testing how people felt when reading a certain story by the emotions suggested by their eyes. The study found that people who read often were able to feel sorrier for the characters in the stories and expressed a broader range of emotions.

 

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