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MO NDAY , JU LY 25 , 2011

Research Bulletin: You Are What You Read

We are frequently warned to be cautious of

our diet with the phrase you are what you

eat. Well, is it also possible that you are

what you read? Would reading about a

person who is more intelligent, more

worldly, and more debonair help to transferthese qualities to yourself? A fascinating

study byMarkus Appel (University of Linz)

has demonstrated that reading about a character who has certain

traits can prime or activate these same traits in our own self. Dr.

Appel asked individuals to read a short movie script that described a

couple days in the life of an ignorant, drunken, soccer hooligan. A

second group of individuals read a script of similar length, but with

more typical content that never referenced the intelligence of thecharacters (the control script). Both groups were then asked to

complete a test of general knowledge (e.g., What is the capital city of

Libya?). Those who read the control script got around 36% of the

questions correct. In contrast, those who read about the soccer

hooligan got around 30% correct. In other words, reading about an

unintelligent story character with poor memory activated this quality

in the minds of reader, resulting in poorer performance on this test.

Keith Oatley has been known to caution that one should chooseones books as carefully as one chooses ones friends; it appears

there may be some real truth to this advice!

http://www.onfiction.ca/2011/07/research-bulletin-you-are-what-you-read.htmlhttp://www.onfiction.ca/2011/07/research-bulletin-you-are-what-you-read.htmlhttp://www.elearning.jku.at/abteilung/mitarbeiter/appelhttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzsaaCC6nGg/TihkxLVaFYI/AAAAAAAAAU0/PE2EaAT3GyY/s1600/come-libros525.jpeghttp://www.elearning.jku.at/abteilung/mitarbeiter/appelhttp://www.onfiction.ca/2011/07/research-bulletin-you-are-what-you-read.html

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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Research Bulletin: Fiction and Helping

We at OnFiction have talked quite a bitabout how reading fiction might help tofoster empathy. The mental processesused to understand a story character, totake that characters perspective and seethe world through his or her eyes, seemsimilar to what we use to understand our

real-world peers. More than just understanding others, fiction seemsexceptionally well-suited to foster an empathic response, given its

often emotional context. Our previous work has examined thishypothesis from various research perspectives and in differentpopulations. Recently, Dr. Dan Johnson (Washington and LeeUniversity) has extended this work to see whether the empathicresponses promoted by fiction might translate to prosocial behavior,or the helping of others. In his study, participants read a short-storyspecifically designed to induce compassion and provide a model forprosocial behavior. Soon after reading, an experimenter

accidentally dropped six pens. The key measurement was whetherthe participant helped the experimenter to pick up the pens. Higherlevels of engagement with the story and higher levels of emotionalempathy after reading predicted whether people were more likely tohelp the experimenter. In a second study, Dr. Johnson replicatedthis finding, increasing confidence in this effect. This is an intriguingstudy in that it demonstrates that short-term increases in empathy asa result of reading can result in actual prosocial behavior.

Johnson, D. R. (in press). Transportation into a story increasesempathy, prosocial behavior, and perceptual bias toward fearfulexpressions. Personality and Individual Differences.

* In what is becoming a disturbing trend, I must apologize for thelateness of this posting. As always, I am happy to provide a copy ofthe original article upon request (see profile for e-mail).

http://www.onfiction.ca/2011/11/research-bulletin-fiction-and-helping.htmlhttp://www.onfiction.ca/2011/11/research-bulletin-fiction-and-helping.htmlhttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QKMtBuIFAY0/TsvMofSyZzI/AAAAAAAAAV0/IVxJGcw9SWw/s1600/book%2Blove.jpeghttp://www.onfiction.ca/2011/11/research-bulletin-fiction-and-helping.html

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Monday, May 23, 2011

Research Bulletin: Finding Matthew

Its practically a truism that reading doeswonders for ones verbal ability. This ideais one of the major reasons why earlyliteracy is stressed so heavily, long beforechildren can read on their own. Children

who are exposed to books at an early ageare thought to develop better abilities thatrelate to reading (e.g., word recognition)and this in turn promotes a reading habit.

Those who are better at reading are likely to do it more often, whichin turn further improves their ability to read and so on. This circularor reciprocal causation is sometimes known as the Mattheweffect, in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In thecase of reading, those who read get better at reading and read more,

whereas those who dont read get worse at reading and read less.The Matthew effect originated in sociology and refers to this biblicalpassage:

For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have anabundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have

will be taken away.- Matthew 25:29

Keith Stanovich was the first to import this term from sociologyinto the field of education and reading. Dr. Stanovich is a long time

colleague of Dr. Keith Oatley, one of our editors, and Dr. Stanovichhas been a valuable influence for many of us here at OnFiction.ca.

Recently, a wonderful meta-analysis summarizing the results ofmany previous studies was conducted by Drs. Suzanne Mol and

Adriana Bus (Leiden University), examining how reading relates toverbal ability. Their analysis found ample evidence that reading isassociated with better performance on a wealth of different verbaltasks, across the lifespan (from preschoolers, through grades 1 to 12,all the way to undergraduate and graduate school years). Moreover,

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these findings were based on a large number of studies (i.e., 99)which tested a great number of participants (i.e., 7,699). This,combined with the careful conduct of the meta-analysis, greatlyincreases our confidence in their conclusion that reading is a highly

important activity when it comes to language development andperhaps even intelligence in general. Although the data available tothem did not allow for a direct test of the Matthew effect, theirfindings were consistent with a rich get richer phenomenon forreading. Meta-analytic reviews such as this are very difficult toconduct, yet the provide the best picture available for what sciencecan tell us about a particular topic. These authors are to becommended for their efforts, for we now know with a reasonable

amount of certainty just how important reading is across thelifespan.

(As always, readers interested in a copy of this important paper areinvited to contact me; e-mail available in profile.)

Mol, S. E., & Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood.

Psychological Bulletin, 137, 267-296.