« A simple model of Iraq | Main | Sir Henry Neville »
Claims about my friends
Robin Hanson will like this one:
The more fiction a person reads, the more empathy they have and the better they perform on tests of social understanding and awareness. By contrast, reading more non-fiction, fact-based books shows the opposite association. That’s according to Raymond Mar and colleagues who say their finding could have implications for educating children and adults about understanding others...
If you, like Robin, are fond of signaling theory the causality can run either way.
Bryan Caplan will like this one:
In general, the students and experts believed mental disorders were less ‘real’ than medical disorders. For example, most of the participants agreed that you either have a medical disorder or you don’t, but that this isn’t true for mental disorders (although a third of the experts felt it was). The experts and students also believed more strongly that medical disorders exist ‘naturally’ in the world, than do mental disorders. The familiarity of conditions didn’t make any difference to the participants’ views.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 22, 2006 at 07:50 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
About the Raymond Mar study:
1. Extremely limited, skewed sample of 94 participants (63 females, 46 Introductory Psychology students).
2. They do not measure reading but fiction and non-fiction author recognition (but with a very popular definition of non-fiction authors such as Michael Moore).
3. Fiction and non fiction author recognition correlates at .84. Readers can identify common authors.
4. The best correlations between author recognition with social ability questionnaires are in the low .20.
Posted by: jaywalker at Oct 22, 2006 2:05:54 PM
I'd read fiction if I had *time* to read fiction, but I don't, so all my reading is non-fiction books because they contain information that I actually need to know.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Oct 22, 2006 3:23:02 PM
I read too much to have friends.
Posted by: RWP at Oct 22, 2006 3:50:21 PM
A lot of people are still (erroneously) Cartesian Dualists.
Some people are (and again erroneously) what I call neo-Cartesian Dualists. They believe that the genes that code for the brain are somehow immune to the forces that drive natural selection. Mind you, most such people are not fully conscious that they hold this belief. But it is implied by other beliefs they hold which can only be explained by neo-Cartesian dualist assumptions.
Posted by: Randall Parker at Oct 22, 2006 4:57:26 PM
So they are saying that the geeks reading the science fiction books at school are more socially able than the non-reading footballers and socialites?
I am sceptical.
Posted by: Patrick at Oct 22, 2006 7:13:09 PM
Of course this makes sense because you can't learn about people by reading true accounts, only by reading fabrications.
Posted by: liberty at Oct 22, 2006 7:51:43 PM
Good comment, jaywalker. IMHO a lot of cocktail-party skills involve being able to talk knowingly about authors, movies, and political situations one knows nothing about. I would bet that empathy and social skills correlate better with recognizing authors you've never read than with actually reading.
To the extent actually reading fiction does correlate with empathy, IMHO it may just be a proxy for IQ or income.
Posted by: DK at Oct 22, 2006 7:52:49 PM
Tyler is right that I find the article interesting; I had seen it a few days before. But jaywalker is right that while the question is interesting, it is far from clear that this paper gives useful results.
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Oct 22, 2006 9:04:57 PM
I find the Mar study personally agreeable because I noticed that when I started spending more time online, and especially when I started blogging and reading a great deal of opinion non-fiction, that I was a less happy person than when reading fiction. I think fiction is necessary to a well-ordered mind.
Patrick,
I didn't realize that the footballers and socialites were immersed in Michael Moore.
Posted by: PG at Oct 22, 2006 10:42:36 PM
Michael Moore is non-fiction?
Posted by: Matthew at Oct 22, 2006 11:23:35 PM
Doesn't the fact that women are the predominant fiction readers, and men the predominant non fiction seem to be important in this discussion? Like that alone could account for the correlation? Since the paper only claims to refer to studies, it's difficult to ascertain what was controlled for.
Posted by: anonymous at Oct 22, 2006 11:44:05 PM
I find the idea that causality runs the opposite way to be plausible, but I don't think that would eliminate the possibility that causality runs in both directions.
Its plausible to think that those who are empathetic might be drawn to non-fiction that often focuses on the feelings and conditions of characters. Those who are less empathetic might decide they "don't have time" for non-fiction just as they "don't have time" to concern themselves with the feelings and conditions of others.
But just because it is plausible that causality could go the other way, I think that it would be very unlikely that reading would not have an impact the other way as well. People tend to care about and be more interested in issues that they know more about. To the extent that fiction reflects reality in that in reflects the inner emotional life of humans, awareness would increase.
Finally, there might be a distinction between "social understanding and awareness" versus social skills. Social skills involve action, but understanding and awareness often only require reflection. Thus, it is possible that the "nerd" who reads fiction is more socially aware and empathetic towards others despite their pathetic relative lack of social skills. Social skills are not necessarily indicative of deep reflection on the human condition; hence the stereotypical jock that wants nothing more than to get down some girl's pants (i.e. is using the girl as a means rather than an end), but lacks anything more than a superficial level of empathy or social understanding and awareness. (How much understanding does Pavlov's dog need to understand that when the bell rings, food will be forthcoming??)
Overall, I am just speculating about this issue conceptually, rather than endorsing the particular empirical results of this study.
Posted by: Ragerz at Oct 22, 2006 11:44:29 PM
Women are more empathetic and read more fiction.
Men are more logical and read more non-fiction.
The other main factor is probably IQ: Higher IQ people read more fiction on average because they read faster, and they are better at thinking about how other people feel because they are better at thinking in general.
See Mike Judge's suppressed dystopian film "Idiocracy" for the lack of empathy of the unintelligent. It's harder to understand where somebody else is coming from if you just aren't that good at understanding anything.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Oct 23, 2006 1:02:02 AM
Gosh, with age I seem to be reading more non-fiction relative
to fiction. Guess my IQ is declining, and I am turning into
an insensitive boob with creeping senility...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Oct 23, 2006 5:59:34 PM
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
xoomer.xxxvideos2
Posted by: JEROGatch at Oct 24, 2006 6:03:26 AM
I don't like to read at all but I do enjoy reading fiction books more than I like to read non-fiction. I am a pretty creative person and I feel like this is the case because of the fiction books I have read. I may not learn as much as someone who is reading things about real-life accounts, but I think that people who read more fiction books do tend to have a more creative mindset. I agree with the person who said that they found themself less happy when once they spent more time on-line. The real world is a slap in the face compared to what we read in fiction stories so really I'd prefer fiction.
Posted by: Christine at Oct 26, 2006 9:19:34 AM
Hi! Have a nice day.
Posted by: Big Tit Bangers at Nov 15, 2006 4:24:27 PM
Weight loss is easier than you think!
Posted by: adipex at Mar 6, 2009 3:51:56 PM
