Reading in Public No. 38: What does it mean for reading to promote empathy?

It's true, of course, but what exactly does it require of us?

May 21, 2024

I firmly believe that reading fosters empathy. As a lifelong reader, English teacher, and professional book person, it’s one of my fundamental values. But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea because I think we in the book world throw out the phrase “reading promotes empathy” all the time without really unpacking it. I can understand why that is. The link between reading and empathy are easily proven both anecdotally and scientifically. There’s no reason to defend it—it’s simply true. But I think it’s worth looking at how reading promotes empathy, because it’s not as straightforward as we make it sound and it has as much to do with how we read as what we read.

Numerous studies have shown that reading fiction can help readers develop empathic skills and qualities. I want to stop here to talk explicitly about those terms: reading and fiction. Reading is more likely to promote empathy than watching television and movies and reading fiction is more likely to promote empathy than reading nonfiction. This is not to say that experiencing stories in other formats or reading true stories don’t foster empathy or that fiction is superior to nonfiction. The reason reading fiction is so successful in this particular regard is all about how we take it in. Reading fiction elicits imagination, inference, and interpretation and it’s these skills that really matter. I find this fascinating because it means how we read matters as much as what we read when it comes to building empathy.

Imagination in particular has been demonstrated to be a critical component in readers practicing empathy. Imagining ourselves in the story or imagining the story happening around us is extremely beneficial in this regard. In fact, studies show that when readers are asked to produce imagery associated with the fiction they’re reading, it increases their empathy for the characters up to three times as much as readers who were not instructed to produce or focus on imagery.

Inferring while reading is likely so natural to many of us that we no longer notice we do it, but it is something we teach and talk about a lot in language arts classrooms. Getting the chance to develop inferences about how a character might respond to a given situation, what they will do next, and how they will feel throughout the story is pretty unique to reading fiction. We’re less likely to practice this when reading about real people (though we might!) and TV and movies move so quickly we just don’t have as much time to be consistently predicting and revising those predictions.

Interpreting literature helps with empathy too. Working to interpret the larger themes of a book or a character’s motivations require us to think outside of our own worldview and engage with ideas we might not be familiar with—even ones we disagree with. When we arrive at these interpretive understandings ourselves rather than having an author spell out their meaning, we are more likely to wrestle with and internalize our learning.

What’s notable to me—and what I keep reminding myself as I feel tempted to rush through books as quickly as possible—is that all of these things require time and active attention. The more time we spend in our books, the more of our own imagination, inference, and interpretation we give them, the more empathic growth we experience.

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-Sara

Reading in Public No. 38: What does it mean for reading to promote empathy?

It's true, of course, but what exactly does it require of us?

Citations & Further Reading

Does reading fiction make us better people?

How reading fiction increases empathy and encourages understanding.

Generating imagery while reading fiction increases empathy and prosocial behavior.

The relationship between empathy and reading fiction.

Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy.

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