Report for: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind

Title	Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind
Published in	Science, October 2013
DOI	10.1126/science.1239918
Pubmed ID	24091705
Authors	David Comer Kidd, Emanuele Castano
Abstract	Understanding others' mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults. We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments 1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments 2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.

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Twitter Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 994 tweeters who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.

Geographical breakdown

Country	Count	As %
United States	136	14%
Japan	128	13%
United Kingdom	69	7%
Canada	20	2%
Spain	14	1%
Australia	12	1%
Netherlands	11	1%
Finland	9	<1%
Brazil	7	<1%
Other	77	8%
Unknown	511	51%

Demographic breakdown

Type	Count	As %
Members of the public	834	84%
Scientists	106	11%
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors)	29	3%
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals)	25	3%

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 1,551 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country	Count	As %
United States	21	1%
United Kingdom	11	<1%
Spain	5	<1%
Netherlands	4	<1%
Japan	4	<1%
Germany	4	<1%
Taiwan	4	<1%
Australia	3	<1%
Canada	3	<1%
Other	21	1%
Unknown	1471	95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status	Count	As %
Student > Bachelor	272	18%
Student > Ph. D. Student	235	15%
Researcher	183	12%
Student > Master	171	11%
Student > Doctoral Student	86	6%
Other	299	19%
Unknown	305	20%

Readers by discipline	Count	As %
Psychology	425	27%
Social Sciences	135	9%
Medicine and Dentistry	105	7%
Arts and Humanities	96	6%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences	93	6%
Other	357	23%
Unknown	340	22%

Attention Score in Context

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#3,389

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Outputs from Science

#209

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Outputs of similar age

#12

of 185,426 outputs

Outputs of similar age from Science

of 846 outputs

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So far Altmetric has tracked 76,406 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 60.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.

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Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind

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