tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post5565937717421149439..comments2024-03-19T02:14:31.704-04:00Comments on <center>OnFiction</center>: Effects of Fiction on EmpathyKeith Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-6467634170546589272013-01-27T12:30:47.019-05:002013-01-27T12:30:47.019-05:00Thank you Fabio, for this very interesting set of ...Thank you Fabio, for this very interesting set of thoughts. I agree, it would be wonderful to see when, exactly, a person becomes transported into a piece of writing. And when the person is transported most intensely. I think it could be done, and perhaps will be done. The first attempt that I know of to investigate this kind of issue was by Victor Nell, and he describes it in <i>Lost in a book.</i> As you say, the answer to your question, of when the immersion starts, might then be able to be related to style of language. Fascinating issues!Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-63291337185340322222013-01-26T09:28:50.135-05:002013-01-26T09:28:50.135-05:00The other day I was reading an essay by Sven Birke...The other day I was reading an essay by Sven Birkerts about his perfect writing day and I was just loving it -- I was "transported" into his writing realm, drinking coffee with him, having wine with him, writing away with him. I was "with" him! Then... well, then he lost me. He lost me as soon as he stopped writing about his experience and started quoting. It didn't matter that it was a fantastic quote, the magic was gone.<br /><br />I have this friend to whom I write and he has only one rule for me: "no quotes!" We cerebral types tend to think in quotes. They just sort of pop up, spontaneously. It's an urge and it must be scratched. But they tend to wake you up from your reading voyage, as if someone had turned on the lights in the movie theater.<br /><br />Anyway, what I wanted to get to is this: instead of asking people to compare two different types of stories, written in different styles, perhaps you could ask people to read only one story, by the same author, and ask them at what moment within that story they were most engaged, or "transported", if you will. You could also ask them at what moment, if any, the author "lost" them, forcing a break in their empathic connection to the story and thus preventing them from recreating, in their mind's eye, the author's original experience. (I understand this would be somewhat different from the Time 1, 2, and 3 described above.)<br /><br />I think the answer will probably point to the use of language -- readers sense, intuitively, by the writing style, by the rhythm of the sentence, by so many clues, when the author is being sincere, that is, when he is relating an intensely lived or imagined experience, and when he is just sort of quoting wooden words that have not penetrated into his soul.<br /><br />Maybe you don't even have to ask the readers this -- you could hook them up to a fMRI machine during the reading process and just register the corresponding brain waves and you'd know the exact moment when they disengaged from a story. If enough people "break" at the exact same point, you could compare the style of language that was used before and after that point, which might point toward an answer to the (fantastic!) question you ask.<br /><br />(Birkerts is one of my favorite essayists, along with Joseph Epstein. Here is a link to that article I talked about: <br />http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/fabled-powers.php?page=all)Fabiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09700598057503097520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-41813815781935772182013-01-21T17:42:38.146-05:002013-01-21T17:42:38.146-05:00Thanks very much, Brent. I totally agree that fict...Thanks very much, Brent. I totally agree that fiction versus non-fiction is rather a coarse, distinction. I think it's very likely that certain kinds of memoir and biography have some of the properties that we have found for fiction. The trouble is that in doing empirical studies one has to proceed by rather small steps. But having got going at this, I think that it's possible that in the next few years researchers in this area will start to understand what features of literature enable readers most easily to achieve particular kinds of understanding, of others and themselves. Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-8499622772084228232013-01-21T14:18:48.425-05:002013-01-21T14:18:48.425-05:00Thanks, I love to see studies like this. My only c...Thanks, I love to see studies like this. My only concern is with the definitions of fiction and non-fiction. Perhaps a third category needs to be introduced: memoir (since there is a great deal of literary work being done in that genre today). Surely the empathy-response would be different between well-written memoir (non-fiction that uses fiction techniques) and newspaper reportage. I'm curious about how memoir would affect transportation and whether it would trigger empathy even more effectively than fiction.Brent Robisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06882060411376854563noreply@blogger.com