Week 15

Learner Objective: Evaluate one theory of how emotion can affect one cognitive process

Research by Matthijs Bal has shown that people who experience the emotions of characters within a novel tend to be more empathetic.  Bal asked a group of 36 students to read a short story or a newspaper article and then in a second study asked 50 people to read an excerpt from a novel and newspaper articles.  What he found was that people had higher levels of "emotional transportation" from fiction and those with a high "emotional transportation" tended to have a higher level of empathy after having read the passage.  Thus, people can become more "involved" in fiction reading and through placing themselves in a character's shoes become more empathetic towards real life situations.

This shows the learner objective because the study exemplifies how emotions experienced through a character changes empathy.


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