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 991 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	135	14%
Japan	129	13%
United Kingdom	70	7%
Canada	19	2%
Spain	16	2%
Netherlands	12	1%
Australia	11	1%
Finland	9	<1%
Brazil	7	<1%
Other	79	8%
Unknown	504	51%

Demographic breakdown

Type	Count	As %
Members of the public	829	84%
Scientists	107	11%
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors)	30	3%
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals)	25	3%

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 1,593 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country	Count	As %
United States	22	1%
United Kingdom	12	<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	1511	95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status	Count	As %
Student > Bachelor	276	17%
Student > Ph. D. Student	236	15%
Researcher	184	12%
Student > Master	171	11%
Student > Doctoral Student	87	5%
Other	316	20%
Unknown	323	20%

Readers by discipline	Count	As %
Psychology	431	27%
Social Sciences	135	8%
Medicine and Dentistry	107	7%
Arts and Humanities	97	6%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences	93	6%
Other	372	23%
Unknown	358	22%

Attention Score in Context

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#3,482

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Outputs from Science

#212

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#13

of 186,384 outputs

Outputs of similar age from Science

of 846 outputs

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Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind

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