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Article published In:
Scientific Study of Literature
Vol. 10:1 (2020) ► pp.64–97

Fiction effects on social cognition

Varying narrative engagement with cognitive load

| Kingston University
| Kingston University

Social cognition, the skillset involved in interpreting the cognitive and affective states of others, is essential for navigating the social world. Research has indicated that reading about fictional social content may support social cognitive abilities; however, the processes underpinning these effects remain unidentified. This study aimed to examine the effect of narrative engagement on social cognition. A text pretest (N = 11), a manipulation pilot (N = 29) and full experiment (N = 93) were conducted. In the full experiment, the manipulation failed to vary levels of narrative engagement (transportation, identification and affective empathy) with a passage from a popular fiction text. A correlation analysis revealed positive associations between narrative engagement dimensions and social cognition. An exploratory between-groups analysis comparing reading to no-reading found a significant gain in explicit mental state attribution in the reading group, when controlling for demographic and dispositional differences.

Keywords: narrative engagement, fiction engagement, social cognition, transportation, character identification, empathy
Article outline
  • Literary and popular fiction
  • Narrative engagement processes
    • Transportation
    • Affective empathy
    • Identification
  • Narrative engagement and social cognition
  • Multidimensionality
  • The present study
  • Text selection pretest
    • Participants
    • Materials
      • Fictional stories
      • Narrative engagement
      • Dispositional fantasy
    • Procedure
    • Results
  • Cognitive load manipulation pilot
    • Participants
    • Materials and procedure
    • Results and discussion
      • Moving forward
  • Full experiment: Effects of narrative engagement on social cognition
    • Method
      • Participants
      • Materials
        • Fictional story
        • Narrative engagement
        • Social cognition
        • Demographic and control questions
        • Fiction-exposure
      • Procedure
        • Data analysis
    • Results and discussion
      • Group and gender differences
      • Data distribution
      • Inter-scale correlations
      • Manipulation check
      • Exploratory analysis: Effect of fiction-reading on social cognition
        • Yoni test
        • SST
  • General discussion
    • Narrative engagement and social cognition
    • Fiction-reading and social cognition
      • Fiction-exposure
      • Fiction-reading versus no-reading
    • Limitations and future directions
    • Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19008.tur
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