Why we read fiction: theory of mind and the novel
Open accessAbstract
Why We Read Fiction focuses on one of the most exciting areas of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson's Clarissa, Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov's Lolita, and Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of cognitive approaches to literature and culture.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Many current theories agree that stories could improve social-cognitive skills and relevant behaviors such as theory-of-mind, empathy, and prosocial behavior.
“Following this idea, many current theories agree that stories could serve to improve social-cognitive skills and relevant behaviors, such as theory-of-mind, empathy, and prosocial behavior6–10.”
From Adolescent leisure reading and its longitudinal association with prosocial behavior and social adjustment (2023) · cites this paper as [10]
Cites
Origins of domain specificity: The evolution of functional organization
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1994) · Mapping the Mind · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511752902.005 · Cited by 849 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Spreng, R. N., Mar, R. A., & Kim, A. S. N. (2009) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.21029 · Cited by 2,143 · see citing works
The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience
Mar, R. A., & Oatley, K. (2008) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00073.x · Cited by 1,345 · see citing works
The Neural Bases of Social Cognition and Story Comprehension
Mar, R. A. (2011) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145406 · Cited by 950 · see citing works
Reading fiction and reading minds: the role of simulation in the default network
Tamir, D. I., Bricker, A. B., Dodell-Feder, D., & Mitchell, J. P. (2016) · Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · doi:10.1093/scan/nsv114 · Cited by 212 · see citing works
Lost in an iPad: Narrative engagement on paper and tablet
Mangen, A., & Kuiken, D. (2014) · Scientific Study of Literature · doi:10.1075/ssol.4.2.02man · Cited by 141 · see citing works
What you read matters: The role of fiction genre in predicting interpersonal sensitivity.
Fong, K., Mullin, J. B., & Mar, R. A. (2013) · Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts · doi:10.1037/a0034084 · Cited by 133 · see citing works
Mar, R. A. (2018) · Discourse Processes · doi:10.1080/0163853x.2018.1448209 · Cited by 108 · see citing works
(2014) · Journal of European Psychology Students · doi:10.5334/jeps.ca · Cited by 62 · see citing works
Beyond perspective-taking: Mind-reading motivation
Carpenter, J. M., Green, M. C., & Vacharkulksemsuk, T. (2016) · Motivation and Emotion · doi:10.1007/s11031-016-9544-z · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Carpenter, J. M., Green, M. C., & Fitzgerald, K. (2018) · Scientific Study of Literature · doi:10.1075/ssol.18011.car · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Lenhart, J., Richter, T., Appel, M., & Mar, R. A. (2023) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-023-35346-7 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Troscianko, E. T. (2018) · Medical Humanities · doi:10.1136/medhum-2017-011375 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Minding Language Models’ (Lack of) Theory of Mind: A Plug-and-Play Multi-Character Belief Tracker
Sclar, M., Kumar, S., West, P., Suhr, A., Choi, Y., & Tsvetkov, Y. (2023) · Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · doi:10.18653/v1/2023.acl-long.780 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
People Searching for Meaning in Their Lives Find Literature More Engaging
Carney, J., & Robertson, C. (2018) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/gpr0000134 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Poetic Metaphors: Creativity and interpretation
Rasse, C. (2022) · Figurative Thought and Language · doi:10.1075/ftl.15 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
van der Kleij, S. W., Devine, R. T., Shapiro, L. R., Ricketts, J., & Apperly, I. (2025) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0001965 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Magirius, M., Steinmetz, M., & Scherf, D. (2023) · L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature · doi:10.21248/l1esll.2023.23.2.584 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
- Authors
- Zunshine, L.
- Corresponding author
- Lisa Zunshine
- ORCID
- Lisa Zunshine
- Venue
- Choice Reviews Online
- Publisher
- American Library Association
- Published
- 2006-12-01
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 04
- Pages
- 44-1963-44-1963
- ISSN
- 0009-4978 (ISSN-L)
- 1523-8253
- OpenAlex
- W46539433
- Cited by
- 1,163
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2025: 17 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 84 · 2022: 93 · 2021: 51 · 2020: 116 · 2019: 74 · 2018: 173 · 2017: 63 · 2016: 54 · 2015: 74 · 2014: 121 · 2013: 43 · 2012: 37
- Type
- book review
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Choice Reviews Online (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- The Knowledge Bank (The Ohio State University) (submittedVersion)
- Knowledge Commons (Lakehead University)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Narrative Theory and Analysis
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art
- Keywords
- theory of mind, fiction reading, cognitive approaches to literature, narrative comprehension, empathy, literary theory, novel, cognitive psychology of reading, Clarissa, crime and punishment, Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Dalloway, Lolita, The Maltese Falcon
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
