Imaginary Engagement, Real-World Effects: Fiction, Emotion, and Social Cognition

Abstract

Prior research has shown that cumulative written fiction exposure is correlated with ( Mar, Oatley, Hirsch, de la Paz, & Peterson, 2006 ; Mar, Oatley, & Peterson, 2009 ) and 1-time exposure to literary fiction increases (e.g., Black & Barnes, 2015a ; Kidd & Castano, 2013 ) performance on an emotion-reading task. However, Panero and colleagues (2016) found that although lifetime fiction exposure is a reliable predictor of performance, the causal effects previously observed may be more fragile (see also Samur, Tops, & Koole, 2017 ). The current article is an exploration of the extent to which the ability of fiction to affect social cognition may depend not only on what is read, but also how one reads. Specifically, an argument is made that the effect of fiction on social cognition may depend on the degree to which the reader contributes imaginatively to the text and that, although drawing meaning from literary fiction may require high levels of imaginative engagement, popular and genre fiction may allow for engaging in this way. This stance is discussed with respect to the role that emotional investment in a story and its characters might play in influencing readers of popular fiction to read in a “literary” way.