We already know that the more people read books, the better their verbal skills including their vocabulary. According to Professor Keith Oatley at the University of Toronto, “Literary fiction works best, especially fiction where the character is the center of what it’s all about.” Over a decade ago, graduate students in his lab started a series of experiments to explore whether reading fiction could help people understand each other. They found that fiction, especially the narrative fiction directly improves our social skills such as reducing the bias and improves our ability to understand other’s beliefs, intentions and desires. Later on, the brain scanning experiments supported those findings showing how stories and vivid imagery activate the hippocampus, a hub of our brain for emotion and memory.
Professor Oatley attributes that as we immerse ourselves in a story involving complex characters and unfamiliar circumstances, it is like working through a simulation, where we absorb and practice new emotions and perspective. We experience what it is like to be in someone else’s shoe. Reading literary fiction helps us understand the human rights of others by improving our empathy toward people in other parts of the world we may never visit, who seem quite different than ourselves. For example, in the Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner", we wade through the lives of Amir and Hassan’s childhood days in Afghanistan and Amir’s life in America with twisting experience of his return back to the Afghanistan under Taliban control.
Different types of fiction provide different social stimulations. Romances guide us through how a person picks a partner such as in "Me Before You" by Jojo Moyes. On the other hand, mystery stories involve navigate the relations between oneself and the antagonist as in the work by thriller author Ruth Rendell or crime writer P. D. James.
Reading fiction is not just passing the time, it has societal implications about how we human beings live with each other and how we understand each other. Reading books can help you fall asleep, escape from reality, lower your stress through laughter or tears and also offer exposure to perspectives that are different from your own.
Let us now discuss about the other ways how reading books can make you a better person, according to science.
1. Reading Books Make You Feel Happier with Yourself and Your Life
In a survey conducted by Josie Billington at the University of Liverpool on 4,164 adults found many interesting differences between those who read regularly and those who don’t. Readers have reported being less depressed and less stressed and having higher level of self-esteem and a greater ability to cope up with challenges. When compared to the non-readers, they had stronger awareness of social issues and cultural diversity and scored higher in terms of feeling close to friends and their community.
2. It Raise Your Intelligence
As per the researchers at the University of Edinburgh and King's College London who tested 1,890 pairs of twins five times from the ages 7 to 16 for their IQ and reading ability, found that the kids with better reading ability compared to their twins had higher verbal and nonverbal cognitive ability. The authors speculate that while reading books help you to remember facts, it also helps them practice in abstract thinking through the process of imagining a book’s plot and putting yourself in place of the characters.
3. Reading Books Protect Your Memory
According to the study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the brain-stimulating activities like reading books help your brain as you age. They conducted tests on the memory and the thinking ability of 294 people every year for about six years before their deaths, which on an average occurred at age 89. Those who reported doing mentally stimulated activities like reading early and late in life had a slower rate of memory decline compared to those who hadn’t. The rate of decline was reduced by about 32 percent in people who were mentally active in their later years as compared to those with only average mental activity.
Don’t worry if you aren’t a big reader- because studies have also demonstrated an improved empathy after watching television shows. I’ll be discussing about Reading Books Vs. Watching Movies Based on Books: Which is Better? in my upcoming posts.
Now, some evidence suggests that reading literary fiction broadens our mind and also improves our ability to empathize with others. In words, reading books not only impacts our IQ (Intellectual Quotient) but EQ (Emotional Quotient) as well. To conclude, reading a good book can make you a better person.
Until then, this is Nyasa signing off.
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