The last post on August 13, 2026, “Sin Boldly,” concerned conservative attacks on empathy and discussed Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003), where the author Azar Nafisi indicates that reading literature increases empathy. I wondered if that was true. A brief search found “Does Reading Fiction Make Us Better People” by Claudia Hammond on the BBC website of June 2, 2019. (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190523-does-reading-fiction-make-us-better-people)
Hammond discusses research on the hard-to-study issue. (My nephew did his PhD thesis in education on the subject. His results were inconclusive.) Her review indicates that reading fiction does increase empathy and perhaps social cognition, the skill at working out what others are thinking and feeling. She says that other reading may also increase empathy but says that with fiction “we have access to the character’s interior world in a way we normally do not with journalism, and we are more likely to willingly suspend disbelief without questioning the veracity of what people are saying. Finally, novels allow us to do something that is hard to do in our own lives, which is to view a character’s life over many years.”
Hammond summarizes, “So the research shows that perhaps reading fiction does make people behave better.” She concludes, “It’s time to lose the stereotype of the shy bookworm whose nose is always in a book because they find it difficult to deal with real people. In fact, these bookworms might be better than everyone else at understanding human beings.”
This reminds me of advice I received early in my legal career when an attorney, a generation older than the group of newbie bar members he was talking with, said, “If you want to be a trial lawyer, read a novel a week.” I was not the only listener who looked quizzical. He continued, “To be good at trials you have to understand human nature, and the best way to learn human nature is to read good novels.” He repeated, “Read a novel a week.” Since he had a reputation as a stellar trial attorney, I registered his remark. (See post of August 1, 2018, “Read A Novel a Week.”)
I have read fiction with a varying frequency throughout my life. Perhaps it has increased my empathy but perhaps not enough. For example, I am not proud that in scanning the obituaries I feel some satisfaction when I find that a vegan has died of a liver ailment
And on the other hand, Sigrid Nunez says in The Friend, “If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away.” Perhaps it is time to leave the keyboard.
