We've all gotten lost in a book at one time or another. But new research suggests the experience can go far beyond the page, with readers not just stepping into a character's shoes but also walking around in them.
Across six studies with about 500 people, adopting a protagonist's feelings, beliefs and internal responses as one's own — a phenomenon dubbed "experience-taking" — was linked with similar behaviours in real life. For instance, people who read a story about someone overcoming obstacles in order to vote were more likely to cast a ballot in a real election days later.
Put simply, characters keep whispering in our ears long after we leave their fictional world behind.
"It's something we've all experienced at some point, but few of us appreciate the impact those connections with characters have on our daily lives," says Geoff Kaufman, a post-doctoral researcher at the Tiltfactor Laboratory at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
Using a variety of methods and scenarios, Kaufman and co-author Lisa Libby discovered that narratives written in the first person, and in which the main character's internal responses were clearly expressed, were likeliest to trigger experience-taking. It was especially critical that readers surrender their self-identity, as experiments in which participants read in a mirrored cubicle — preventing them from losing themselves in the narrative — saw little effect.
In stories in which a character was similar to the reader, such as attending the same school, it was important that this likeness was revealed early on. By contrast, when a character was different from them, experience-taking occurred most strongly when that dissimilarity was revealed later in the story.
For example, when people read about a character of a different race or sexual orientation, learning of that difference later in the story made them more likely to express favourable attitudes toward that group, and be less likely to stereotype, than readers cued to the difference earlier on (researchers controlled for previously held beliefs).
"The early revelation of the group membership seemed to highlight the difference between readers and the character, and made it more difficult for readers to step into the character's shoes," explains Kaufman.
In a separate experiment, those who read a first-person story about someone from their own university struggling to vote, 65 per cent cast a ballot in the presidential election days later, compared to 29 per cent of those who read a version in which the protagonist attended a different school. Even after controlling for people's initial voting intentions, experience-taking remained a significant predictor of actual voting behaviour.
"We show there's more than just entertainment value to narratives: Having these authentic experiences in a book can, at least temporarily, be transformative," says Kaufman. "It can change the way you see the world, the way you see yourself, and the way you see other social groups."
Libby, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University, says the research appears to affirm the notion that people can inhabit any fictional character, given the right conditions — a phenomenon with implications for everything from preventing bullying to boosting tolerance or electoral participation.
"It can be very powerful," says Libby. "If you can get people to relate to characters in this way, you might really open up their horizons, getting them to relate to social groups that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise."
The study appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.