# Narrative, Fiction, and the Transformative Power of Literary Fiction

## 2.3. Narrative, Fiction, and the Transformative Power of Literary Fiction

Like a triplet of nested Russian dolls, narrative contains fiction,
which in turn encompasses literary fiction (Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015).
According to Bruner (1990), what sets narratives apart from logical
discourse is that the former deal with specific accounts of human
experience, while the latter deals with generalisable truths. Narratives
are universal in human culture and at the centre of human communication
and social interaction, serving as tools for sharing knowledge, values,
and emotions. Recent research suggests that exposure to narratives
triggers a simulation-like process in the mind, allowing individuals to
rehearse social experiences and derive meaning from them (Mar & Oatley,
2008; Oatley, 1999).

Fiction involves characters, events, and worlds that do not necessarily
correspond to reality, while maintaining coherence and plausibility
within an imagined setting (Oatley, 1999; Ryan, 1980). Readers treat
plausibility as a separate dimension from factual truth; even when they
know a story is fictional, perceived realism strongly predicts narrative
engagement (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008). According to the poet and
philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, engaging with fiction requires a
"willing suspension of disbelief" (Coleridge, 1817/2008; Oatley, 1999),
accepting the narrative as real within the story's context. Not merely a
means for entertainment, fiction offers opportunities for
perspective-taking and emotional simulation (Mar et al., 2006).

Literary fiction represents a distinctive form within fictional
narratives. Though some argue that literary fiction arises from genre
conventions and culturally shaped canons (Pavel, 2003), according to
Miall and Kuiken (1999), its distinguishing qualities include foregrounding,
defamiliarisation, and potential modification of personal meaning.
Foregrounding, as detailed by Miall and Kuiken (1999), refers to unique
stylistic and narrative features, such as deviations from everyday
language, unusual metaphors, and complex plot structures. These features
lead to defamiliarisation, a cognitive and emotional effect that prompts
readers to re-evaluate familiar concepts or emotions through new,
unfamiliar lenses, ultimately transforming the reader's feelings or
beliefs.

Koopman & Hakemulder (2015) tackle a fundamental issue in the field: the
inclination in research on the psychological impact of literature to
confuse narrativity (story structure), fictionality (referential
status), and literariness (stylistic foregrounding). This concern echoes
past criticisms by Hakemulder (2000) and Mar and Oatley (2008), who
cautioned against treating narrative exposure as a monolithic
phenomenon. Koopman & Hakemulder (2015) build a more exact framework for
analysing which textual dimensions (i.e. plot architecture, fictional
status, or stylistic deviation) drive empathy and reflection related
outcomes by separating these constructs. They argue that, rather than
narrative structure alone, literariness, characterised by foregrounding,
ambiguity, and stylistic complexity, may be especially potent in
eliciting perspective-taking and reflective processing. This point is
crucial for the present study, which asks whether exposure to literary
fiction predicts gains in mentalisation and empathy as complementary
capacities (see also Dixon et al., 1993; Miall & Kuiken, 2002).

Through the fundamental processes of role-taking and defamiliarisation,
Koopman & Hakemulder suggest that literary reading activates
psychological change. Role-taking aligns with simulation-based
Theory-of-Mind accounts in which readers internally recreate others’
mental states (Gallese & Goldman, 1998; Mar & Oatley, 2008; Oatley,
1999). Defamiliarisation, a term from Shklovsky (1917/1965), empirically
studied by Miall & Kuiken (1994, 2002), describes how stylistic
foregrounding and linguistic deviation slow reading and deepen
processing. While defamiliarisation can spur metacognition and ethical
self-reflection, role-taking promotes cognitive empathy and social
reasoning. Because literary fiction combines complex characters with
unconventional stylistic choices, it can uniquely engage both empathy
and reflective (explicit) and pre-reflective (implicit) mentalising
(Hakemulder, 2000; Miall, 2006).

### 2.3.1. Short-Term Experimental Evidence

Kidd and Castano (2013) conducted a series of studies showing that
exposure to literary fiction, but not popular fiction or nonfiction,
enhances mind-reading. In five experiments, participants who read short
literary excerpts outperformed those in popular-fiction, nonfiction, or
no-reading conditions on affective (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test
\[RMET\]; Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy 2 – Adult Faces
\[DANVA2–AF\]) and cognitive (false-belief, Yogi) ToM tasks; lifetime
print exposure to fiction, indexed by the Author Recognition Test (ART),
also predicted RMET scores (Kidd & Castano, 2013). Using an expanded ART
that distinguished literary, genre, and nonfiction authors, they found
that only familiarity with literary fiction correlated positively with
RMET, whereas genre and nonfiction did not; this relation held after
controlling for Interpersonal Reactivity Index subscales such as
Empathic Concern and Personal Distress (Kidd & Castano, 2017). Three
preregistered replications retained the original methodology and again
showed that literary fiction, but not genre fiction, familiarity
predicted RMET scores, with highly exposed readers rating
popular-fiction characters as flatter, suggesting long-term literary
reading sharpens sensitivity to character complexity (Kidd & Castano,
2018). Although later multi-lab efforts report smaller or null effects,
the overall pattern supports the view that stylistic and psychological
depth selectively strengthen the Online Simulation and
Perspective-Taking facets of empathy central to mentalisation. These
findings laid important groundwork for exploring how the features of
literary fiction bring about such effects. One proposed mechanism is
foregrounding, the stylistic defamiliarisation that may enhance both
aesthetic and emotional processing.

In 2016, Koopman conducted a controlled experiment to investigate how
foregrounding might affect affective responses, empathy, and reflection.
Participants (_N_ = 142), comprising parents as well as students, were
randomly assigned to read one of three versions of the same literary
work: (1) the original text high in phonetic, semantic, and grammatical
foregrounding, (2) a version without imagery (semantic foregrounding
removed), and (3) a version without any foregrounding at all.
Foregrounding was linked to more complex emotional reactions including
ambivalence and aesthetic appreciation and found to dramatically
increase perceived stylistic originality. Even after controlling for
variables including trait empathy, personal experience with grief, sex,
and literary exposure, quantitative results revealed that only the
original version significantly raised empathic understanding for
real-world others. Although the original condition had initially greater
general emotional response and empathic distress, these effects vanished
once SES variables were accounted for. For the readers of the original
version, though foregrounding had no significant effect on reflection,
the qualitative analysis showed that they were more likely to report
ambivalent emotional states and general reflections on human suffering
and resilience. Koopman (2016) concludes that, especially when stylistic
complexity aligns with emotional themes, literariness can actively
deepen affective and empathic engagement.

While Koopman emphasised style at the narrative level, other studies
have examined whether specific linguistic devices, such as metaphors,
may influence ToM more directly. Bowes and Katz (2015) investigated
whether processing metaphorical language improves ToM. Participants
completed the RMET after reading or writing literal or metaphorical
sentences in three different experiments. Participants exposed to
metaphor performed better than those in the literal condition in each of
the three experiments. This effect was seen not only when metaphors were
presented as part of text (Experiment 1), but also when the participants
created imaginary contexts for the metaphors (Experiment 2). and even
when the participants read metaphors in isolation (Experiment 3). The
authors suggest that as metaphors force the reader to think about the
speaker's intention, a process strongly tied to ToM, metaphoric language
can enhance affective ToM capacity in the short-term by eliciting
social-cognitive inferences.

Other researchers have emphasised the role of individual differences. In
2013, Djikic and colleagues looked at whether reading literary fiction
as opposed to nonfiction essays leads to increase in empathy. In their
study, participants were randomly assigned to read either a literary
short story or a nonfiction essay matched for length and literary
quality, before and after which they completed cognitive and affective
empathy measures (Davis, 1980, 1983), and the RMET (Baron-Cohen et al.,
2001). Although no general effect of text type was found, participants
low in Openness showed increased cognitive empathy after reading
fiction, whereas people low in Openness did not. Another finding was
that higher lifetime exposure to fiction, as measured by ART, predicted
improved performance on the RMET test across both conditions. These
results confirm that fictional stories can improve social cognition,
particularly in those who might be less naturally inclined to
perspective-taking, and that the cumulative effects of exposure to
literary fiction on ToM develop over time.

Finally, two experimental studies by Bal and Veltkamp (2013) tested the
hypothesis whether reading fiction increases empathy and whether
emotional transportation mediated this effect. Participants were
randomly assigned to read either a fictional narrative (excerpt from
Saramago's _Blindness_ or a Sherlock Holmes story), or a nonfiction news
article. Empathy was assessed at baseline, immediately after reading,
and one week later. Their results revealed that reading fiction
increased empathy only for readers who had a high degree of narrative
transportation into the story. On the other hand, fiction readers who
experienced low transportation showed a decline in empathy over time.
Furthermore, the empathic gains among highly transported fiction readers
became more evident following a one-week delay, indicating that the
psychological impact of fiction may develop gradually. This delayed
effect supports earlier research demonstrating fiction simulates complex
social experiences and affects social cognition over time (Mar et al.,
2006). No relationship was observed for the nonfiction condition
regarding empathy. Hence, the authors provide experimental evidence for
the causal influence of fiction in promoting empathy, particularly in
emotionally invested readers over time.

### 2.3.2. Long-Term Exposure Evidence

Castano and colleagues (2020) investigated whether long-term exposure to
literary as opposed to popular fiction predicts differences in social
cognition in three areas: attributional complexity, egocentric bias, and
interpersonal accuracy. The authors discovered that reading literary
fiction was positively correlated with more sophisticated causal
reasoning about other people (attributional complexity), improved
performance on affective ToM tasks (RMET), and increased accuracy in
estimating the beliefs and attitudes of others. They did this by using a
modified ART that distinguished between authors of literary and popular
fiction. These findings support earlier findings that the psychological
depth and structural ambiguity of literary fiction foster reflective and
socially attuned cognition (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mar & Oatley, 2008).
On the other hand, exposure to popular fiction was unrelated to both
RMET performance and interpersonal accuracy and negatively correlated
with attributional complexity, indicating that it may reinforce
simplistic views of human behaviour. After controlling for gender and
education, the link between literary fiction and reduced egocentric bias
was significant The findings suggest that popular fiction does not seem
to provide the same cognitive or empathic affordances as literary
fiction, which seems to promote nuanced, accurate, and less self-centred
social reasoning (Castano et al., 2020).

Expanding earlier studies linking general fiction exposure to
social-cognitive skills, Fong and colleagues (2013) looked at whether
various genres of fiction are differently correlated with interpersonal
sensitivity. The authors studied the effects of lifetime print exposure
to Domestic Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, and
Suspense/Thriller genres using the revised Author Recognition Test
(ART-R). They found that performance on the RMET was positively
correlated with overall fiction exposure while nonfiction exposure was
not. Where genres were concerned, only Romance fiction consistently
predicted higher interpersonal sensitivity when controlling for
personality traits (Big Five), sex, English fluency, and other genre
exposures, with the Suspense/Thriller and Domestic Fiction genres
showing weaker, less robust associations. Interpersonal sensitivity was
unrelated to reading science fiction or fantasy. These results imply
that genres stressing interpersonal relationships and emotional
complexity may offer richer simulations of social experience, hence
improving readers' affective ToM (Mar & Oatley, 2008; Zunshine, 2006).

Finally, Appel and Richter (2007) studied whether fiction narratives
could modify readers' real-world beliefs, even in the case when they
included false information. Participants read a short story that
included subtle accurate or inaccurate information about the world, and
their beliefs were assessed either immediately after reading or two
weeks later. Their findings were that not only their beliefs were
influenced, but that the effect of the inaccurate information in the
text increased over time, a phenomenon known as the absolute sleeper
effect. The results highlight the persuasive potential of fiction in the
long-term.

### 2.3.3. Moderators and Mechanisms

This section surveys theoretical and empirical models explaining how
literary fiction exerts its effects on social cognition. These include
mechanisms of embodied simulation, stylistic complexity, emotional
immersion, and motivational alignment. Each pathway may differentially
influence affective and cognitive empathy, self-mentalisation and
other-mentalisation, and broader existential reflection.

Gallese (2001) puts forward the Shared Manifold Hypothesis, arguing that
there are three levels to embodied simulation which is at the core of
empathy: subpersonal (the mirror neuron system, whereby observing
someone else's behaviours, feelings, or emotions triggers the same brain
regions in the observer as if they were experiencing these themselves),
functional (the ability to take on the other's perspective as if it were
one's own), and phenomenological (the sense of similarity between self
and other). Importantly, this model views empathy as a pre-reflective,
embodied understanding of others that facilitates goal attribution and
emotion recognition rather than as a detach process of inference. By
establishing simulation as the main mechanism for social cognition and
interpersonal resonance, Gallese (2001) provides a convincing
neurocognitive substitute for theory-theory explanations.

A complementary model is Castano’s (2024) "less-is-more" hypothesis,
suggesting that fiction improves emotion recognition not by means of
frequent use of emotional words, but by means of inviting readers to
infer emotions from indirect cues, training their inferential and
simulated social cognition. Based on correlational and experimental data
(e.g., Kidd & Castano, 2013; Schwering et al., 2021), Castano (2024)
argues that literary fiction, with its complex syntax, implicit emotion
language, and concrete descriptions helps to develop emotional awareness
and ToM. This contrasts with popular fiction, which offers less chance
for inference and embodied simulation by using simpler syntax and more
explicit emotional labels. Based on this, Castano argues literary
fiction's tendency to "show but not tell" elicits deeper mentalising,
drawing on corpus evidence of linguistic (Castano et al., 2023) and on
work linking familiarity with literary authors to higher emotion
recognition scores (Castano, 2024; Schwering et al., 2021).
Developmental work (e.g., Peskin & Astington, 2004) supports this
assertion by demonstrating that emotionally implicit stories may better
train ToM even in children and extends it to adult readers by linking
literary style to cognitive engagement.

Among the most original contributions of Koopman and Hakemulder (2015)
is their conception of “stillness,” a condition of cognitive openness
and slowed processing made possible by literary engagement. Conceptually
derived from Martel’s (2009) contemplative view of literature and
developed empirically by Koopman and Hakemulder (2015), who relate
“stillness” to aesthetic distance and reflection (Kuiken et al., 2004;
Miall, 2006). Stillness, in contrast with transportation which
emotionally immerses the reader, gives space to the reader to be
reflective in an engaged but not absorbed manner. Koopman and Hakemulder
(2015) contend that this reflective stillness might be what helps
readers to face existential concerns and ambiguity. Within the framework
of the present study, this model presents a convincing explanation of
how literary fiction might influence not only ToM and empathy but also
existential issues, which remain underexplored in most empirical
research on reading. Koopman and Hakemulder (2015) argue that literary
fiction, through round characters and foregrounded stylistic features
which lead to defamiliarisation (Miall & Kuiken, 1994), encourages
reflective engagement through aesthetic distance (Cupchik et al., 1998), which
together give rise to stillness, a contemplative state that enables
deeper self-understanding and other-understanding. They distinguish
between cognitive and affective empathy, trait vs. state empathy, and
narrative vs. real-world empathy, emphasizing that literary fiction
uniquely fosters narrative empathy and reflective thinking through this
interplay of narrativity, fictionality, and literariness. Although
empirical evidence is still developing, they suggest that reader
engagement, prior reading experience, and emotional transportation
moderate these effects. Their model helps to explain why studies like
that of Johnson (2012) and Bal and Veltkamp (2013) revealed empathy
increases only among participants who demonstrated high transportation.
The authors emphasise the difference between affective and cognitive
empathy, referring to evidence from the study of Shamay-Tsoory and
colleagues (2009) who found the two types of empathy rely on different
neural systems.

Bal and colleagues (2011) in their conceptual analysis article propose a
conceptual framework explaining how fictional narrative exposure
influences behaviour through the processes of transportation and
transformation. The authors differentiate between long-term cognitive
and behavioural changes, such as creativity, interpersonal behaviour,
and empathy, from short-term affective benefits, such as detachment from
work stress. Building upon Oatley's transportation-transformation model,
they argue that fictional narratives expose readers to emotionally
compelling and cognitively dissonant viewpoints, which through
introspection challenges their mental schemas and leads to behavioural
changes. They identify key moderators as frame of reference,
identification with characters, and perceived realism. Though the work
is theoretical, preliminary empirical research by Bal and Veltkamp
(2013) supports their assertions that over time emotional transportation
and transformative reflection after reading fiction can increase
empathy.

Appel and Richter (2010) investigated how readers' emotional disposition
affects the persuasiveness of fictional stories. In two experiments,
they tested whether need for affect, the tendency to approach or avoid
emotional experiences, predicts narrative transportation, which in turn
predicts belief change. Participants in the first experiment read either
a fictional story including a psychiatric patient who commits a violent
crime, or a control story on an unrelated topic. The emotionally intense
story led to increased belief in the dangerousness of psychiatric
patients, but only among participants high in need for affect who also
reported high transportation. In the second experiment, the subject was
organ donation for both conditions, though the first story had high
emotional content whereas the second had low emotional content. Again,
only the highly affect-motivated and transported readers showed belief
change, but crucially, only after reading the high-emotion version. In
both experiments, belief change only happened among participants high in
need for affect who also reported high transportation into the story.
These findings imply that emotional motivation impacts not only the
degree of readers' engagement with a story but also their
internalisation of its implied worldview.

Djikic and Oatley (2014) show how literary fiction causes self-change
through a process called indirect communication. Based on previous
experimental data (e.g., Djikic et al., 2009; Djikic et al., 2013), they
argue that literary fiction serves as a simulation of selves interacting
in the social world, allowing readers to experience other mental and
emotional configurations without any instructions. Literary fiction,
they suggest, causes temporary personality fluctuations, especially when
the story moves readers emotionally, and that these fluctuations might
be precursors for more permanent transformation. Most importantly, these
changes are unique to each reader and not determined by authorly intent,
unfolding in ways moulded by personal resonance and emotional response.
Rather than providing answers, fiction presents the reader with
questions and ambiguity, which create a cognitive and emotional
environment where they may step outside of their usual personality
structures and imagine alternative aspects of their selves. Through
literary fiction's use of metaphor, foregrounding, and
defamiliarisation, fiction engages readers in indirect communication
which encourages interpretation and self-reflection (Miall & Kuiken,
2002; Zunshine, 2006).

Finally, Coplan (2004) argues that readers connect with fictional
characters primarily through empathy. She shows that readers frequently
take on the spatial-temporal and emotional viewpoints of protagonists,
encoding events from the character's point of view, by drawing on
empirical research from text processing and narrative comprehension
(e.g. Gernsbacher et al., 1992; Rinck & Bower, 2000). Coplan (2004)
makes an important distinction between empathy, emotional contagion, and
sympathy, emphasising that empathy requires perspective taking and
self-other differentiation simultaneously to imagine the thoughts and
feelings of characters while remaining conscious of one's own thoughts
and feelings. Opposing the view that readers usually feel for rather
than as characters Coplan (2004) argues that empathy can accommodate
emotional congruence and divergence in knowledge, preference, and
identity at the same time, that is, they can both feel for a character,
while also feeling like them, both of which could be different, even
opposing emotions (e.g. feeling happy for a villain’s demise while also
empathising with their despair and sadness, imagining what it must be
like to be in their shoes). Her account reinforces the view that
literary fiction promotes social understanding by allowing readers to
imagine themselves in another person's subjective world, which is a
mechanism central to ToM.

Taken together, these models offer a multi-layered understanding of how
literary fiction may influence the full range of mentalisation and
empathy processes from implicit resonance and emotional tracking to
explicit reflection and existential self-inquiry. Mechanisms such as
embodied simulation and emotional inference foster affective empathy and
other-mentalisation, while stylistic foregrounding, narrative ambiguity,
and aesthetic distance support self-mentalisation, Perspective-Taking,
and engagement with existential concerns. These processes are not
uniformly activated, but depend on readers’ motivational traits, prior
experience, and emotional transportation, highlighting the complex,
moderated nature of fiction’s psychological effects.

### 2.3.4. Beyond Print

While literary fiction remains the focus of most research on narrative
and social cognition, recent studies suggest that other narrative media,
such as television, video games, and film, may similarly engage
mentalising processes when they exhibit sufficient psychological depth
and narrative complexity. If this is the case, the mechanisms through
which fiction affects empathy and mentalisation may be
medium-independent, hinging instead on features like character depth and
interpretive demand.

Black and Barnes (2015), drawing from previous research linking literary
fiction exposure and ToM capacities, investigated whether award-winning
television dramas had similar effects. Participants were randomly
assigned to view either an award-winning TV drama or a documentary
matched in quality and production value. After viewing, participants'
affective ToM by was evaluated through RMET. Even after controlling for
prior fiction exposure and sex, those who watched fictional dramas
scored higher on RMET. In a second experiment, a control group viewing
nothing scored the lowest on RMET. As award winning drama has a similar
impact to literary fiction on affective ToM, the authors argue that
rather than the medium of the content being consumed, it is the
narrative complexity and character depth that facilitates mentalising.

Extending fiction exposure and social cognition search into the domain
of film, Castano investigated whether art films, likened to literary
fiction, enhance ToM more than Hollywood films, which are likened to
popular fiction (2021). In a randomised experiment participants watched
the first 20 minutes of either an art film or a Hollywood film and then
completed two ToM measures: RMET for affective ToM and the Moral
Judgment Task (MJS) for cognitive ToM. Viewers of art films outperformed
those who viewed Hollywood films on both measures. Mediation analyses
revealed that this effect was mediated by participants’ perceptions of
the character’s complexity and unpredictability, supporting the idea
that cognitively demanding characters prompt greater mentalising.
Castano argues that, as with literary fiction, art films foster ToM by
withholding schematic cues and demanding interpretive effort, as opposed
to the formulaic storytelling typical of Hollywood cinema, starring
stereotypical characters. This study strengthens the claim that
narrative complexity and psychological depth, rather than medium, are
key to cultivating social-cognitive skills.

Narrative-driven video games represent an even more interactive form of
storytelling. Bormann and Greitemeyer (2015) investigated whether video
games could facilitate similar effects on immersion, psychological need
satisfaction, and affective ToM. In the two conditions out of three, the
participants played a narrative-driven game, with the narrative group
receiving instructions to focus on the narrative, and the second group
to focus on the technical and gameplay aspects (hence avoiding the
narrative). In the third condition, they played a simple platforming
game with almost no narrative elements. Those in the narrative condition
who actively interacted with the in-game story showed notably higher
immersion, more satisfaction of autonomy and relatedness needs, and
better affective ToM performance (Bormann & Greitemeyer, 2015), measured
with RMET. Using video games in their methodology gave the authors the
chance to test whether narrative processing, rather than mere exposure,
drives these effects, which was found to be the case, and that literary
fiction's ability to enhance ToM is not unique to the medium.

These findings collectively underscore that the mentalising effects
observed in literary fiction are not exclusive to the printed word.
Rather, they extend across media that maintain literariness through
psychological complexity, narrative ambiguity, and character depth.
Whether conveyed through books, screens, or controllers, it is narrative
richness, and not format, that emerges as the key driver of enhanced
empathy, perspective-taking, and mentalisation.