LITERARY FICTION AND EMPATHY

I think that what they found through these experiments makes perfect sense. At first, I wasn't too sure because I feel like popular fiction puts you in other people's shoes as well, but after the professor that teaches a master's program in writing fiction added in how he feels ("Maybe popular fiction is a way of dealing more with one’s own self, maybe, with one’s own wants, desires, needs."), I definitely understood their results more. Just like one professor says, literary fiction is great in laying out several different character stories but leaves it up to the reader to decide exactly how to interpret the different stories. In Hamlet, soliloquies, or when a character in a play "thinks out loud" directly to the audience, are used often to help the audience connect with the character and understand more his or her's way of thinking. I know that personally when I am reading a story, I tend not to sympathize with the character whose motives I do not truly understand. It is the character who shares more of their deeper thoughts that I "root" for a little bit, even if on the outside they might not be the obvious favorite. By reading more of character's innermost thoughts, it gives me a feel of how others might also think, which might just be increasing my empathy and understanding of others, just as the experiment shows.