The Use of “Literary Fiction” to Promote Mentalizing Ability

“Interpersonal Reactivity Index cognitive sub-scales (IRI): the IRI, which Davis [30] developed, is the most frequently used self-administered instrument to assess the different components of empathy.”

“In these pictures, taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) [44], the stimuli show individuals feeling different emotions: positive emotions (25 pictures that include emotions such as happiness, positive surprise) and negative emotions (25 pictures that include emotions such as sadness, anger, disa…”

“For the post-reading phase, we used the following measures Empathy Quotient- Emotional sub-scale [46, 38].”

“For the pre-reading phase, we used the following measures: Basic Empathy Scale-Affective Empathy Sub-scale (AES) [28, 29]: the AES is comprised of 11 items (N° 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18) that measure congruence with another person’s emotions [18].”

“[36] developed to measure the different aspects of empathy [37–40].”

“Happè’s task is more advanced than previous tests of theory of mind.”

“Recent studies [10, 11] have pointed towards reading literary texts as a means of enhancing empathic abilities.”

“In a recent study, Kidd and Castano (2013) found that reading literary fiction increases mentalizing ability and may change how people think about other people’s emotions and mental states.”

“Example of items on the AES are: “My friend’s emotions don’t affect me much” or “I often get swept up in my friend’s feelings”.”

“Specifically, regarding mentalizing, we used measures that evaluated three aspects of this competence: cognitive empathy, perspective taking and mind-reading according to Zaki and Ochsner’ s model [8].”

“Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET)—Cognitive Empathy (CE): the CE component evaluates the capacity of the subjects to infer the emotional and mental states of the individuals shown in the image [2, 6, 43].”

“Validation studies are lacking for this test [33].”

“Empathy is the capacity to share the physiological and emotional states of other people [1, 2, 3].”

“Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET)—Cognitive Empathy (CE): the CE component evaluates the capacity of the subjects to infer the emotional and mental states of the individuals shown in the image [2, 6, 43].”

“Moreover, we hypothesize that this lack of emotional engagement in science fiction books could make them more suitable to potential treatments involving individuals with autism [20, 21].”

“An example of first-order theory of mind is “The washing machine task” [41,42]; whereas an example of second-order theory of mind is “The wallpaper” [41].”

“Attribution of Intentions Task [35]: the concept of attribution of intentions to others is a central element of what is often referred to as theory of mind.”

“Their findings underscore the role that reading can play in supporting children’s development of emotional and social skills [13, 14].”

“The stronger the affective representation, the more likely he/she is able to experience empathy in the social context [51].”

“Example of items on the AES are: “My friend’s emotions don’t affect me much” or “I often get swept up in my friend’s feelings”.”

“Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET)—Cognitive Empathy (CE): the CE component evaluates the capacity of the subjects to infer the emotional and mental states of the individuals shown in the image [2, 6, 43].”

“’s [50] and Bal and Veltkamp’ s [47] results, in our study the fiction group showed significant differences compared to the other two groups in the performance-based measures.”

“Moreover, reading fiction also seems to improve mentalizing among adults[15, 16].”

“These results may set important goals for future low-cost rehabilitation treatment for several disorders in which a deficit of ToM is considered “core” to the disease such as in the treatment of individuals with schizophrenia [48] and autism [6].”

“and it enables us to interact successfully in social groups [9].”

“Recent studies [10, 11] have pointed towards reading literary texts as a means of enhancing empathic abilities.”

“Studies on emotional and social components involved during the reading of literary texts, however, are scarce, and only a few studies have specifically investigated the affective processes underlying story processing [12, 17].”

“In fact, according to Coman and Richardson' s study [49], these measures evaluate different aspects of cognitive and emotional functioning: self-reported functioning reflects the perception that a person has about his/her performance of tasks [49]; whereas, performancebased measures are more objective and assess the a…”

“Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET)—Cognitive Empathy (CE): the CE component evaluates the capacity of the subjects to infer the emotional and mental states of the individuals shown in the image [2, 6, 43].”

“For the post-reading phase, we used the following measures Empathy Quotient- Emotional sub-scale [46, 38].”

“Their findings underscore the role that reading can play in supporting children’s development of emotional and social skills [13, 14].”

“The IRI does not provide a total score because each sub-scale evaluates an independent component of empathy [3, 31, 32].”

“An example of first-order theory of mind is “The washing machine task” [41,42]; whereas an example of second-order theory of mind is “The wallpaper” [41].”

“Researchers have distinguished between and compared “literary” fiction to “popular” fiction (e.g., Kidd & Castano, 2013; Pino & Mazza, 2016) with the former described as focused on character development, and the latter on plot development (Kidd et al., 2016).”

“…have found that reading literary fiction results in an immediate improvement on ToM measures relative to non-literary fiction or non-fiction (Kidd and Castano 2013; Pino and Mazza 2016), more recent large-scale attempts to replicate these findings have found null results (Panero et al. 2016).”

“…have successfully demonstrated a causal influence of stories on mentalizing ability have either employed a long-term intervention (e.g., reading a book for 2 weeks; Pino & Mazza, 2016) or a within-subjects design that controls for individual differences between conditions (Black & Barnes, 2015a).”

“…design, in which the same people read both a story and a control text (Black & Barnes, 2015a), or a longitudinal design, in which people read an entire book over a 2-week span (with mentalizing measured using false-belief tasks and a full-face version of the RMET; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“Consistent with the hypothesis, results revealed higher ToM performance among participants assigned to read literary fiction (see also Black & Barnes, 2015; Kidd et al., 2016; Pino & Mazza, 2016; van Kuijk, Verkoeijen, Dijkstra, & Zwaan, 2018).”

“Consequently, studies like Black and Barnes (2015), Pino and Mazza (2016) and Experiment 1 of Samur et al. (2017) were excluded.”

“Happé (1994) used the term “advanced” to refer to a story that contains the comprehension question, where the key questions in the task concerned a character’s mental states (the experimental condition) to explain the cause about his/her behavior (Pino and Mazza, 2016).”

“As described above, some studies have found evidence for a beneficial effect of literariness by comparing the effect of reading a piece of literary fiction to the effect of reading a piece of popular fiction (Kidd & Castano, 2013, 2018; Pino & Mazza, 2016; van Kuijk et al., 2018).”

“…participants to read or view a text that they might have no particular desire to read or view (e.g., Black & Barnes, 2015a; Kidd & Castano, 2013; Panero et al., 2016; Pino & Mazza, 2016), may be particularly ill-suited to identifying any potential social–cognitive benefits of popular fiction.”

“…that reading literary fiction leads to stronger performance on tests of theory of mind compared to reading nonfiction (e.g., Black & Barnes, 2015; Kidd & Castano, 2013, Exp. 1) and, most important, compared to reading popular fiction (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Kidd et al., 2016; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“Second, reading a single short story or an excerpt 6,28,29,32,33 or even an entire book 34 , does not reflect the theoretical accounts of these phenomena 8,9 .”

“A third study was by Pino and Mazza (2016), who asked participants to read whole books: one group read a literary work, one group read expository nonfiction, and one group read science fiction.”

“Research has demonstrated that high quality literary fiction (Kidd and Castano, 2013, 2016, 2017; Pino and Mazza, 2016), cinematic fiction (Black and Barnes, 2015) and narrativized video-games (Bormann and Greitemeyer, 2015) can improve ToM performance.”

“Some studies have found that reading fiction improves sociocognitive abilities (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“A study by Pino and Mazza (2016), in which participants (N 214) read entire books—either literary, expository nonfiction, or science fiction—also replicated Kidd and Castano’s (2013) finding that reading literature enhances mentalizing abilities.”

“Happé (1994) used the term ‘advanced’ to refer to the two-level investigation of the story protagonists’ mental states to explain the cause of his/her behaviour (Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“MET-Cognitive Empathy (CE) The CE component evaluates the capacity of the subjects to infer the emotional and mental states of the individuals shown in the image (Dziobek et al., 2008; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“…measure of empathy in psychology research and has been used to assess this construct in violent ofenders [88] and physicians [196]; in the context of mental well-being in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic [37]; and even to support the use of literary fction to promote mentalizing abilities [132].”

“…Typical Development (TD), people’s responses in self-reports may be over or under estimation of actual abilities [68]; in the ASD case, self-reports are definitely not recommended because of the difficulty that ASD people may have in reflecting and reporting on their own behavior and emotions [69,70].”

“Several strategies have been proposed to promote empathy, including literary fiction (109), virtual reality (110), or intergroup dialog (111, 112).”

“The concept of ‘Theory of Mind’ (ToM) is the second theoretical framework that could help explain the mechanisms between reading literary fiction, on one hand, and ‘the capacity to identify and understand others’ subjective state’ – ToM defined – on the other hand (Kidd and Castano, 2013: 377; Pino and Mazza, 2016).”

“Changes may still occur before final publication.”

“…many replications have been published using either the exact same methodology (e.g., Kidd & Castano, 2019; Kidd, Ongis, & Castano, 2016; van Kuijk, Verkoeijen, Dijkstra, & Zwaan, 2018) or conceptually similar ones (Black & Barnes, 2015; Castano, 2021; Pino & Mazza, 2016; Schwerin & Lenhart, 2022).”

“Pino and Mazza (2016) did not replicate this result but showed improvements on two other tests of mentalizing (a false-belief task and a facial-emotion recognition test), but no improvement on experience-sharing measures.”

“Similarly, Pino and Mazza (2016) report that when their participants read an entire book infer the mental states of others.”

“…over/under estimation of actual ability [Co-man and Richardson 2006], it has to be observed that in the ASD case, self-reports are not recommended because of the difficulty that ASD people may have in reflecting/reporting on their own behavior and emotions [Pearl et al. 2016; Pino and Mazza 2016].”

“…(NS) v2(1) = 3.84 p = .05 (NS) Panero et al. (2016) F(1, 167) = 0.08 p = .775 (NS) F(1, 191) = 0.83 p = .363 (NS) F(1, 53.6) = 0.08 p = .775 (NS) Pino and Mazza (2016) t(139) = 6.24 p , .00001 t(145) = 4.97 p , .00001 Samur et al. (2018) F(1, 153) = 0.56 p = .45 (NS) F(1, 153) = 0.56 p = .45…”

“…literary fiction is often thought to be a particularly strong candidate for improving social cognition, many studies have contrasted it with popular fiction either as a whole, (e. g., Kidd & Castano, 2013; Panero et al., 2016) or with specific genres within popular fiction (Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“Those who read fiction show an improved capacity for empathy (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Koopman, 2015), and the effect is more marked when the fiction is literary (Kidd & Castano 2013; Koopman, 2016, 2018; Pino & Mazza, 2016; Nunning, 2014; Hakemulder et al., 2017).”

“…Study 1 and 5), other studies suggest that reading literary fiction is related to increased cognitive, but not affective, empathy and theory of mind (Pino & Mazza, 2016) or no change in either (De Mulder, Hakemulder, van Den Berghe, Klaassen, & van Berkum, 2017; Kidd & Castano, 2013; Study 2;).”

“The research findings seem to be decidedly mixed for the comparison between literary and popular texts (Kidd & Castano, 2013, 2019; Kidd et al., 2016; Panero et al., 2016; Pino & Mazza, 2016; Samur et al., 2018; van Kuijk et al., 2018).”

“The literary fiction condition participants also scored higher than those who were either in a non-fiction reading condition or in a condition in which they did not read anything at all (Kidd and Castano, 2013; see also Black and Barnes, 2015; Kidd et al., 2016; Pino and Mazza, 2016; Kidd and Castano, 2018; van Kuijk…”

“However, based on the aforementioned research data, we can also hypothesize that reading literary fiction may enhance ToM skills (15, 17, 22, 39), which in turn suggests that it may be a potential means of improving ToM deficits in certain psychopathological states, such as schizophrenia (21, 36) through remediation.”

“…questionnaires, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ; Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004), that have been widely used in previous studies on fiction reading (e.g. Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Johnson et al., 2013; Liu & Want, 2015; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“…exposures to fiction reading apparently do not lead to ToM changes (Camerer et al., 2018; Panero et al., 2016; cf. Kidd & Castano, 2013; Pino & Mazza, 2016), there is evidence that greater lifetime exposure correlates with better ToM (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mar et al., 2006; Mumper & Gerrig,…”

“…with literary, but not popular fi ction (Castano et al., 2021; Das & Vasudevan, 2022; Kidd & Castano, 2013, 2017b, 2019; Kidd et al., 2016; Pino & Mazza, 2016; van Kuijk et al., 2018) and the prelim-inary evidence that literary fi ction makes use of fewer emotion words (but conveys emotion…”

“Studies by Gürcan et al. 18 , Peña et al. 20 and Pino and Mazza 21 suggest that interventions using literary fiction or movies can improve clinical symptomatology in schizophrenia, as well as promote mentalizing and social functioning skills.”

“Reading fiction is associated with heightened empathic skills, a finding that has been demonstrated repeatedly (e.g., Blair, 2005; Hakemulder, 2000; Keen, 2007; Nussbaum, 1995, but see also Pino & Mazza, 2016 for contrasting findings).”

“Reading literary fiction leads to better performance in ToM tests in healthy subjects compared to reading non-fiction, popular fiction, scientific fiction or nothing at all (40, 41).”

“…been found: to (1) improve verbal abilities better than non-literary and ex-pository fiction texts (Mar & Rain, 2015); (2) improve mental abilities (Pino & Mazza, 2016); (3) form inference in the mental state by utilizing social context; (4) improve theory of mind ability (Dodell-Feder et al.,…”

“This task includes a two-level investigation of the story protagonist’s mental states, because the stories contain an understanding question and a key question to explain the cause of his/her behavior [48].”

“This task includes the two-level investigation of the story pro-tagonist’s mental states, because the stories contain an understanding question and a key question to explain the cause of his or her behaviour (Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, involves conscious and intentional processing of mentalization which can be practiced, for example, through reading about others’ mental states and conditions (Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“…studies have corroborated this finding, showing that multiple forms of literary fiction increase performance on the RMET and related tests (Black & Barnes, 2015a, 2015b; van Kuijk et al., 2018) and boost self-reported empathy (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Djikic et al., 2013; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“There are many studies in the literature that support the effects of book reading-based interventions on individuals ’ making sense of both their own inner world and the inner processes of others (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Kidd et al., 2016; Pino & Mazza, 2016).”

“In this sense, our findings are in the same line with previous studies that found significant effects of fiction reading exposure on theory of mind (Kidd & Castano, 2013, 2017; Pino & Mazza, 2016; Tabullo et al., 2018).”

“The fictions written by Dumas, Zola, Mann, and Bauby are literary works which referred to diseases and are outstanding examples of the influence of literature on attitudes and cognition of physicians and psychiatrists (7, 8); but the second group of researches reported the amazing impact of storytelling on the human m…”

“In contrast, Pino and Mazza (2016) also employed the Faces Test (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, & Jolliffe, 1997) and the False Belief Test (Rowe, Bullock, Polkey, & Morris, 2001).”

“Some variability was observed in individual study estimates: earlier experiments reported small-to-medium effects (Kidd and Castano, 2013; Pino and Mazza, 2016), while later pre-registered replications were more likely to obtain smaller estimates, sometimes only reaching or just missing traditional…”

“Additionally, people who read fiction are more inclined to interpret others’ mental states through the character’s perspective and to empathize with the feelings and actions of fictional characters [22].”

“Similarly, Pino and Mazza study ‘mentalising ability,’ which refers to ‘the ability to understand what others are thinking or feeling, while the emotional sharing dimension includes the capacity to emotionally resonate with other people’s feelings’ (Pino and Mazza 2016, 1).”

“Building on prior research, including Kidd and Castano (2013), and Black and Barnes (2015), Pino and Mazza’s extensive study demonstrated that attentive reading of fictional novels can indeed enhance empathy levels among psychology students (PINO and MAZZA, 2016).”