You Are What You Read

The power of literature has been evident over the centuries. The ability of narrative to emote, inspire, arouse and ignite is part of its mystery, its joy and its value.

But new research with neuroscientific implications is beginning to suggest the ways, precisely, that the act of reading influences readers.

Inflaming passions already present is one thing. But the ability to change a person's world-view by causing the reader to identify with the protagonist in a story may yield even further insights into the manner by which words and narratives may trigger responses not heretofore recognized, let alone understood.

These results raise as many questions as they answer: have such impulses always been present or has the evolution of human knowledge and intelligence contributed to a new power in literature? Are positive and negative influences randomly or equally distributed across the population and across the literate realm?? If so, why? And if not, why not?

This may be the beginning of a new field of human inquiry, as stimulating as the power of the written word itself> JL

Daisy Yuhas reports in Scientific American:

How you identify with a protagonist in a story influences your attitudes and beliefs Reading a good book immerses you in a character's world—and may change your views, according to a recent study at Ohio State University.

Psychologists Geoff Kaufman and Lisa Libby assigned 78 heterosexual males to read one of three stories, two about a homosexual protagonist and one about a heterosexual protagonist. Afterward, the readers reported having no trouble identifying with the straight character, but their ability to relate to the gay protagonist varied based on when they discovered his orientation.

Those who read a story in which the character was introduced as gay in the first paragraph did not connect to the character as strongly as those who learned of the character orientation near the story's end. Most important, the latter group—the men who identified most with the gay protagonist—relied less on stereotypes to describe the character and reported more positive attitudes toward homosexuality in general.

“Readers can emerge from a reading experience seeing the world, other people and themselves quite differently,” Kaufman says. The findings remind readers to think critically about their reactions to characters and to be aware of the power of prose.