[LINK] The power of fiction for moral instruction
From Medical Daily: Psychologists Discover How People Subconsciously Become Their Favorite Fictional Characters
Psychologists have discovered that while reading a book or story, people are prone to subconsciously adopt their behavior, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses to that of fictional characters as if they were their own.
Experts have dubbed this subconscious phenomenon ‘experience-taking,’ where people actually change their own behaviors and thoughts to match those of a fictional character that they can identify with.
Researcher from the Ohio State University conducted a series of six different experiments on about 500 participants, reporting in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that in the right situations, ‘experience-taking,’ may lead to temporary real world changes in the lives of readers.
They found that stories written in the first-person can temporarily transform the way readers view the world, themselves and other social groups.
I always wondered at how Christopher Hitchens (who, when he wasn’t being a columnist, was a professor of English literature) went on and on about the power of fiction for revealing moral truths. This gives me a better idea of how people could imprint on well-written fiction. More so than, say, logically-reasoned philosophical tracts.
This article is, of course, a popularisation. Anyone have links to the original paper?
Edit: Gwern delivers (PDF): Kaufman, G. F., & Libby, L. K. (2012, March 26). “Changing Beliefs and Behavior Through Experience-Taking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0027525
The article says the authors are one Kauffmann & Libby, and implies it was published in the last year. So:
Go to Google Scholar, punch in ‘kauffman libby’, limit to ‘Since 2012’; and the correct paper (“Changing beliefs and behavior through experience-taking”) is the first hit with fulltext available on the righthand side as the text link “[PDF] from tiltfactor.org”.
I hope this will be helpful for the future.
FWIW, I’ve been compiling relevant material on this for a while. As it happens, I already had this study.
Cheers! And yes, of course fiction is dangerous; that’s much of the point. A frequently valid synonym for “dangerous” is “effective”.
I’d quote you in the next rationality quotes thread if there weren’t a rule against it.
I was thinking of the bit of Unix philosophy that says: “Unix was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things.” (Doug Gwyn) Hasn’t been quoted yet, so be sure to dive in at 00:00 UTC Sunday :-) Edit: Monday!
Fiction is also very good at making moral falsehoods appear to be moral truths.
I think it’s likely more general than just moral truths. Combine fictional bias and availability bias, and I’m guessing fiction alters your model of the world. Read grim stories, predict a grim world.
Obligatory link.
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I seem to recall a study showing that people who watch lots of TV tend to overestimate the probability per unit time of undergoing certain acts of violence by an order of magnitude. (But maybe it’s just that people who watch lots of TV and people who don’t suck at probabilistic reasoning are mostly non-overlapping groups, or something like that.)
On the flip side: as a child, my father wondered why anyone would ever commit a crime, because, as he saw on TV, criminals were always caught...
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Yes, it’s an effective tool, not necessarily a safe one.
The depressing thing is that the fiction that gets read is the fiction that people like to read, which is fiction that does not instruct them but tells them they’re wonderful just as they are.
A corrective has historically been the concept of good literature. See for example George Eliot, Anton Chekhov, etc.
I’ve often wondered why we like reading bleak stories. That sounds like the explanation is that reading Chekov makes you feel like “a great, wise, and observant man”.
I agree, but it may be that the best way to accomplish that end, or at least the route Chekhov has taken, is actually to make wise observations. If we are capable, as a culture, of sometimes recognizing writers whose observations are indeed wise, who help us to simulate the experiences of other people, or better possible selves, with high fidelity, then good literature is probably worth a look. That has been my experience, at least. (Another reason to enjoy reading bleak stories might be an aesthetic appreciation for the beauty of the language, for example.)
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A key passage:
Nice find.
I agree with this and I will simply copy a relevant comment that I’ve made before:
Where can I find this Death Note? And other examples? I love HPMOR, and I’d love to read more like it!
My other examples are mainly other fanfics (like Luminosity) and anime (like Code Geass). Also in terms of Tv shows things like Sherlock and Doctor Who can work in this way.
It’s an anime series: http://web.hi10anime.com/death-note/
I’d also recomment the two live-action movies (http://web.hi10anime.com/death-note-movies-e2/) which I believe to be slightly better than the anime, for reasons that would be spoilerish to talk about.
The site I linked above has a few problems recently with accessability due to ads. I’ve lately had best success downloading when I use Firefox.
Incorrect. That anime series and the movies were based off of Death Note, but are not the original Death Note. The original was a manga, which you can read here. If you want to watch the movie of the book or the TV show of the book you may, but in general in cases like this (and in this cas in particular as well) I find that the original is much better. Death Note is so good, however, that after reading the manga through to the end you may want more. If so, then go to the anime and the movies, but I very strongly recommend you start with the original.
License Note. Read only after you’ve read Death Note.
I wonder what the average relaxation rate is and if there is any residual.
From my totally scientifically collected and sample-bias-free personal experience, the short-term effect has a half-life of 3 days at most, with the effects generally being undetectable after a week.
A well-designed study of this would be interesting.
The effect sizes (eyeballing the graphs) are pretty small. I think the take-away here is more about ‘a lifetime of media consumption’ rather than any one piece of media.
For that matter, I sometimes catch myself adopting the behavior, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of real people as if they were my own, too.
I don’t think they have to be written in the first person for that to happen. At least in my case, I don’t think there’s any noticeable difference between stories written in the first person and stories written in the third-person subjective, and I think that I’ve also identified with characters from stories in the third-person subjective and third-person omniscient.
Interesting. I’ve always seen the Disney fairy tales as very helpful primers on parenting (in the what-not-to-do sense). But I don’t think I identify with any particular Disney characters.
Tell that to a little princess begging her parents for a horse just like X.
“I’ve lived the lives of all the characters in all my books, and all their mighty wisdom thunders in my head.”
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First:
And then:
That’s like a meta-comment on the article, isn’t it?
It’s turning the paper into a story, and stories are most of how humans communicate.
And that model predicts the results given in the article.