Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Read Better Books To Be a Better Person

Posted by timothy on from the great-books-like-the-novelization-of-grand-theft-auto-5 dept.

00_NOP writes "Researchers from the New School for Social Research in New York have demonstrated that if you read quality literary fiction you become a better person, in the sense that you are more likely to empathize with others [paper abstract]. Presumably we can all think of books that have changed the way we feel about the world — so this is, in a sense, a scientific confirmation of something fairly intuitive."

4 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Nonsense. by ornil · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a deeply flawed study. Basically, it's cherry-picking with a vengeance. There's a good discussion at Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7715

    1. Re:Nonsense. by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Informative

      For what it's worth, that was thrown on later by media uptake; the authors simply talk about theory of mind. It is safe to assume Ayn Rand has a very small chance of fostering this in someone.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  2. Re:And this is news? by timeOday · · Score: 4, Informative

    Read the article, it was a randomized study in which people were assigned to read specified books selected beforehand by the experimenters.

  3. Some do, some don't by Dr.+Winston+O'Boogie · · Score: 3, Informative

    The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford