Why We Read Fiction

 I seem to be on a roll here with the fourth book on the foundations of storytelling. This was not intentional. And, I hope to give you a break after this one. But, I stumbled onto a book entitled Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. The author is Lisa Zunshine. In the previous post I made a distinction between scholarship and research. This book is an instance of scholarship, using that dichotomy, and falls within a general area called critical studies. Personally, I prefer research to scholarship and should also mention along the way that I am not a fan of critical studies. So, this book is very much at the end of the spectrum that I prefer to avoid. It can be considered a part of critical studies, literary studies, literary criticism and perhaps other similarly titled areas of study. Yet, there was something about the book that caught my attention. I have read some good stuff from this end of end of the spectrum and I do try to be fair. So, I thought I would give it a shot.

In order to explain what this book is about, I have to introduce two terms - mind reading and theory of mind - which are real phenomena in the field of psychology. First "In psychology, mind-reading is when we try to infer what is going on in someone’s mind without asking them to clarify." [1]

We do this all the time. For example, perhaps your significant other is acting oddly and you try to ascertain what the problem is without actually asking them.  Or, alternatively, a home service provider (such as a plumber or repair person) is claiming that you need something expensive and you try to determine their motives. Are they acting in your best interests or are they just trying to earn a juicy fee or commission? The better your mind reading skills, the better you can function socially. So, developing good mind reading skills is in your best interest. The term "mind reading" is unfortunate as it conjures up a charlatan in a turban with an Eastern European accent who is mysteriously reading your thoughts.

As you attempt to read a person's mind, you employ numerous rules and heuristics that you have learned over the years. Some people lie. People often behave in their self interest. When your significant other is quiet, they are usually withholding information from you. If they are being nice as well, they are withholding something really big. And so on.  You may have dozens, if not hundreds, of these little rules of thumb that help guide you in the mind reading process. The collection of these rules is your theory of mind and it helps you read minds more effectively. So, when your significant other is uncharacteristically dressed up with cologne and claiming to be going to the library to do some research on property taxes, you may not take it at face value.

The more refined your theory of mind, the better your mind reading will be. Unfortunately, you cannot tell the people around you that you are trying to refine your theory of mind so you would appreciate it if they would be completely honest with you about their feelings and motives so that you can evaluate the accuracy of your determinations. That would certainly inhibit your ability to function socially, not to mention decrease the number of friends you have on Facebook. So, what is one to do?

According to Zunshine (and I agree) this is one of the reasons why people read fiction. We attempt to mind read fictional characters and, in doing so, refine our theory of mind. I would point out that this is far from the only reason that we read fiction. We also read fiction to learn values and vicariously experience situations. The same way that puppies play fight to prepare themselves for the real thing, should it actually arise, we experience conflicts in stories to prepare ourselves for those conflicts should they actually arise. And, if you were to list of all the dozens of reasons why people read fiction, refining their theories of mind and hence their mind reading would easily be in the top ten, if not in the top five.

To be fair to Zunshine, I should also mention one of the central cognitive phenomena that she explores in great depth in the book. Consider the following example. Sally tells Martha that she thinks her (Sally's) boyfriend (Bob) is cheating on her. Martha tells me that Bob cannot be trusted. I ask Bob what is going on between him and Sally. Bob says nothing is going on and everything is fine but now is worried because he thinks Sally may be unhappy in the relationship. What is going on here? Who do we believe? How do we unpack this? Your theory of mind has lots of tentative information complicated even further by recursive assertions. This is why you need to develop and refine your theory of mind. And this is one of the things that fiction can help you with. 

Here is an example that I came across recently. Many fans of the TV series LOST believe that the island was purgatory. One of the pieces of evidence that they provide is the episode(s) where characters are saying "We are all dead".  If you take that at face value, then it is pretty strong evidence for the purgatory claim. However, what if this claim is not a statement of fact? What if this is a fear about the future? Or, better yet, what if the writers are intentionally misdirecting the audience? This is not such a far fetched idea, as writers of mystery and detective stories misdirect the readers all the time. Zunshine used examples from Mrs. Dalloway. But, I felt the more people saw LOST than read Mrs. Dalloway.

In real life you may never figure out what is going on. Maybe Sally had a fling with Walter and is feeling guilty so she blames Bob in order to provide some justification for her behavior. Maybe Walter told Sally that Bob was having an affair in order to make his seduction of Sally a little easier. Maybe there is no Walter but Sally's girlfriend Janet told Sally that Bob was having an affair in order to hurt her because Janet's boyfriend flirted with Sally. Maybe Bob is disappearing a couple of nights a week taking cooking classes which he has not told Sally about because he wants to surprise her with a candle light dinner and some dishes neither of them can pronounce. We could go on and on with possibilities. But, you will probably never know the whole story. One might even say that the essence of the human condition is never knowing the whole story.

But, in fiction, we often do get the whole story. And in those cases where the story ends without revealing the whole story we still get way more of the story than we ever get in real life. For those loose ends we can always join a book club and hash out the possibilities with other readers. So, fiction helps us improve our mind reading and helps us refine our theory of mind. While those may not be the only reasons that we read fiction. They are certainly near the top of the list.