- Neuroscience
Books Can Change Lives, According to Recent Research
After the experiment
After the volunteers read their assigned stories , they answered a series of questions . They were asked about the degree to which each of them had identified with the narrative or, in other words, had taken the experience of the character as their own.
The researchers found that volunteers who’d read the first-person version of a student from their own university showed a greater degree of identification with the character. From that group, 65 percent went on to vote in the actual presidential elections, even though some of them hadn’t considered doing so before .
In a similar experiment, the researchers found another interesting reality. 70 male heterosexuals were asked to read a story about a day in the life of another student. There were three versions of the story. In one, the character was revealed to be gay early in the story, one late in the story, and in one the student was heterosexual. Those that read the story where the character was identified as gay later in the story were found to be more empathic with homosexuals after reading the book.
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