Doctor's Orders: Read!

7/8/2024 — I hope everyone is staying cool as these summer temperatures start to climb! Better yet, I hope you get to curl up in a cozy place with AC and crack open a new book. Reading may just be good for your health and make you a good person, or so the researchers say.

For today’s email, I decided to do a bit of my own reading about research articles on the positive effects of reading books. I’ll be giving you the super-summarized version—plus the APA reference list because I’m a nerd 🙂—so you don’t have to read them yourself! That is, unless you want to.

I wanted to start with a new term that is really important to the fiction genre. I’ve actually discussed this idea in previous emails about world-building a believable fantasy novel, but I had no clue there was a word to sum this up! The word is verisimilitude. Verisimilitude refers to a work of fiction being believable in several contexts, like characters, conversations, settings, etc. For example, if a book takes place in New York City and the main character sees cows on the sidewalk, that would not fit the idea of verisimilitude in this setting. What would? Hot dog stands and trash bags on the sidewalk. I wanted to start with this term and its definition because the research articles I read and compiled for you all were specific to the fiction genre.

In a study by Jacobs and Willems (2018), a model was used and found correlations between reading fictional stories/poetry, and skills like “inference and situation model building, immersion, mental simulation and imagery, figurative language and style, and the issue of distinguishing fact from fiction”. In other words, reading helps prep us for real-life situations and social interactions.

Another study looked at narrative art—which includes fictional stories, poetry, plays, and more—and are set in a sequence of events (Oatley & Djikic, 2018). They found that readers who engaged with these had the ability to feel emotions elicited from the art, to change their personalities, and to increase their empathy. The art we consume and the books we read can be a major factor in our own character development and our capacity to understand our own and other’s emotions.

The last article I looked through was particularly interesting. Dodell-Feder and Tamir (2018) found that “compared to nonfiction reading and no reading, fiction reading leads to a small, statistically significant improvement in social-cognitive performance”. Social cognition refers to how we take in information about our social surroundings and how we choose to respond to it. Empathy and theory of mind—thinking of others’ minds/perspectives—were both two factors that the researchers looked at. Basically, reading can be a tool we use to better relate to others and increase social connections. So cool! They also mention that “strong social connections can significantly improve well-being, stave off physical illness, and enhance longevity”. The bottom line (in my semi-not-really-professional-opinion) is that reading is the perfect prescription for life!

So make sure to carve out some time in your day for your health, AKA books.

Much love and happy reading,

Gail ❤

The Aforementioned APA Reference List

Dodell-Feder, D., & Tamir, D. I. (2018). Fiction reading has a small positive impact on social cognition: A meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(11), 1713–1727. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000395

Elbom, G. (2023). What is verisimilitude?. Oregon State University. https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-verisimilitude-definition-and-examples

Jacobs, A. M., & Willems, R. M. (2018). The fictive brain: Neurocognitive correlates of engagement in literature. Review of General Psychology, 22(2), 147-160. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000106

Oatley, K., & Djikic, M. (2018). Psychology of narrative art. Review of General Psychology, 22(2), 161-168. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000113