Maneuvering the Art of Empathy through Literary Work: A Quantitative Analysis of Differences in Empathy Exhibited by Readers and Non-readers of Fiction and Non-fiction

Description

Page: 458-463

Anvesha Patel and Akanksha Soni (Department of Psychology, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Ahmedabad, Gujarat)

Currently, it’s difficult to establish how avid the Indian population’s interest is in reading due to a lack of sufficient data in the field. To bridge this gap, this study aims to analyse the different levels at which empathy manifests itself in non-readers, readers who prefer fiction literature and those who prefer non-fiction literature. A total of 80 readers and non-readers were asked to fill out the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy. Readers were asked to either read a prose entitled ‘Incarnations of Burning Children’ by David Foster Wallace or an article entitled ‘Neglect can be as damaging to Child Development as Abuse’ based on their preference for reading Fiction or Non-fiction. T-tests were conducted for both groups, and both showed significant differences in the empathy of readers and non-readers and non-fiction readers and fiction readers. While the findings support previous work by establishing that reading does increase empathy, the study points to a need for further study on the relationship between non-fiction and Empathy by establishing that Non-Fiction readers have greater empathy. This result may also point to a cultural variance in the data that has already been collected on the topic.