Learning from fiction: a philosophical and psychological study

Principal Investigator: Professor Gregory Currie (University of York)

Co-Investigators: Professor Heather Jane Ferguson (University of Kent), Dr Stacie Friend (Birkbeck, University of London) 

Funder: The Leverhulme Trust

Background

Written fictions are often viewed as valuable sources of truth or insight. A common refrain is that reading fiction enhances ‘insight’ into human psychology, or provides instructive examples of social situations. Some exponents of literature’s cognitive value argue that great fiction teaches us psychological ‘laws’, while others assert that reading literature enhances moral understanding and empathy.

These optimistic assessments of fiction’s cognitive value are by no means universal. The role of fiction in enhancing empathy has come under attack. Opponents within literary studies have appealed to Barthes’ warning of the “reality effect”, deconstructive attacks on textual meaning, or doubts about ‘educational’ literature.

These debates have typically proceeded with little attention to empirical evidence. Yet the claim that we learn from works of fiction, morally or otherwise, surely demands empirical support. In fact, a number of psychological studies have begun to investigate learning from fiction, but results are mixed.

We identify three key knowledge gaps in the existing literature, in both the humanities and sciences:

• Little interaction between theoretical and empirical approaches.
  
• Insufficient attention to distinctions between fiction, literature and narrative.
• Little consideration has been given to what constitutes genuine learning, by which we mean cognitive and/or moral improvement.

Objectives

Our focus is learning from fiction, the domain where research in the humanities and empirical sciences most clearly intersects. We are sympathetic to the idea that readers learn from fiction. However, much more must be done to establish the claim, as well as to delineate the cognitive effects produced by different works and the mechanisms by which they produce them. This can only be achieved through collaborative research.

We will therefore investigate questions amenable to empirical study, but dependent for their interpretation on philosophical analysis and argument. In particular, we ask whether and how exposure to fiction modulates: