Courtesy of Vinay:
There’s a new study showing that the brain responds to narrative stories by simulating the action in the story:
This strikes me as a bit of an example of a scientific study proving the logically obvious (they do that a lot, in my opinion), but still interesting to think about in relation to my concrete reading experiences.
When I’m absorbed in a good book, I have genuine emotional responses to what I’m reading – I cry if a character I love dies, I squirm and feel horribly embarrassed for the teenager doing the stupid things I did when I was 15, etc. And generally (for fiction) the better the book, the less intellectual and more visceral the response. If I’m really identifying with a character, I feel what they feel — which is why its so important that characters’ thoughts and emotions are written realistically, because when they aren’t it jolts you right out of the experience – what you’re personally experiencing as you read the book is suddenly disjointed from what the character is experiencing.
There’s of course a lovely escapism in leaving my world for a fictional one, of being totally removed from wherever I am for a while. And I guess that’s how certain books can always calm me down (WINNIE THE POOH, especially if I can’t sleep) or cheer me up (HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON). But there are also certain books where I like to match my mood, rather than escape it, and it works as a bit of an excorcism. The ultimate for me is ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY when I’m feeling cranky for no reason and can’t snap out of it.
Anyway, enough rambling by me — anyone want to share thoughts on a) this study or b) books that you use for specific, mood-related purposes?
-->Feed me text
January 30, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I have a ton of thoughts about this study that I want to post later on (thanks, Vinay!) … but just to say about the squirming in embarrassment: Emily is not joking. When the two of us watch the MY SO-CALLED LIFE episode “The Betrayal” together, there is a particular scene that we can barely stand to watch, because it causes us physical pain from the humiliation we experience vicariously through a particular character. My god, it hurts.
Actually, for anyone who saw RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, the scene where she makes the toast had a similar effect on me. Egads.
January 31, 2009 at 2:19 pm
OT: Are the book titles supposed to appear in all-caps or is it my browser? If the former, why not italics or at least small caps?
February 1, 2009 at 10:16 am
We stole the all caps style from some other book blogs. I think the idea is that it makes it easy to scan for titles and see what’s being discussed. Do you find it hard to read, or just peculiar?
February 2, 2009 at 9:40 am
I don’t think I find the all caps style particularly hard to read, but was a bit startled by it (this is the first book blog I have ever read). The reasoning makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
February 3, 2009 at 7:17 pm
MAP: There is nothing I enjoy more than explaining. Unless it’s explaining why I still haven’t finished my Master’s thesis. (“Well, see, I started this blog…”)
Back on the subject of this post… I’m totally not actually going to do my own post about this (so many other things to blog first! Especially because I just finished some great books!), so let me just say part of what I would have said.
Which is that on one level, this didn’t really surprise me at all, because I clearly am acting out all kinds of things in my head as I imagine them, all the time. But on another level, I always thought I was weird for doing that, so maybe this is a surprise after all.
Like, when I imagine a conversation in my head, I tend to make the associated facial expressions. Since walking and thinking are also deeply connected for me (ask Emily how much my pacing drives her nuts), this leads to my looking like a crazy person as I walk down the street. Luckily, I also walk so fast that most people don’t have time to notice.
Also, it clearly is truly my brain imagining a physical process. Like if I’m eating something, the voice narrating in my head will be talking with its mouth full. Is that just me???
May 21, 2009 at 8:19 am
[...] in our blog, Emily posted about a study finding that fiction readers’ vicarious experiences of characters’ emotions can [...]