How literature can help us develop empathy | Beth Ann Fennelly | TEDxUniversityofMississippi

[Music] [Applause] [Music] greetings from an evangelist for a declining field the study of literature English majors like all humanities majors are on the wane until 2011 one-third of the degrees granted from liberal arts colleges went to the humanities now just one quarter do at research universities during the same time period degrees and the humanities fell from 17 to 11% what accounts for this probably practicalities 2011 graduates were choosing their majors in 2008 the recession given the absurd cost of a college degree who can blame students for choosing more vocational majors I to have college tuition woes my husband and I have a freshman in college with two younger children approaching the starting block I too have heard the old joke question what's the difference between an English major and a park bench answer a park bench can support a family of four so I get why English majors would be on the decline but you want to know what else is on the wane empathy a study of over 15,000 college students found that today's students are 40% less empathetic than those in the past today's students are 40 percent less likely to identify with statements like I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective there are forty percent less likely to identify with I often have tender concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me what's the connection well I've spent the past two decades in the classroom reading readers and what I passionately believe and what the emerging field of literary neuroscience is beginning to prove is that reading literature makes us more empathetic our sympathetic or frustrated with Hamlet when he delays avenging his father's death when Jane Eyre learns mr. mr. Rochester is already married do we urge her to flee Thornfield or to stay what we're doing when we're thinking through protagonist actions is we're judging them against what we would do in the same situation or what we have done in the past we practice making decisions that have consequences which is to say we practice adulting the mind-reading we do when thinking through a character educates our emotional intelligence and this was proven in a study called the reading the mind in the eyes test this study took participants and gave them photographs cropped to reveal only a subjects eyes and then gave them four options to choose what emotion that person was feeling now we're actually going to try that here today I'm gonna ask for a show of hands and the rules are like this everyone has to vote for one of the four options and anyone who's caught not voting will be invited on stage to do interpretive dance okay are you ready what is this man feeling raise your hand for terrified raise your hand for upset raise your hand for arrogance raise your hand for annoyed this man is upset we're gonna try one more now that you've got the hang of it look at his eyes what is this man feeling everyone has to vote raise your hand for joking raise your hand for insisting raise your hand for amused raise your hand for relaxed this man is insisting if you got both of those right raise your hand and keep it raised for a second everybody turn to look at those people statistically speaking it's likely they are better readers than you are regular readers score higher on the reading the mind in the eyes test because it's theorized reading allows us practice taking on another person's perspective it's funny but we have this stereotype of the bookworm as this paste-eating socially awkward loner but reading improves our social awareness reading literature helps us read the room well one of my favorite authors is Jane Austen and in one of my favorite studies students were given Jane Austen to read but not on a couch they read her in an fMRI machine which detects blood flow change to depict a change in brain activity so paying attention to the areas of the brain that engage and coordinate when we read gives us a clue to what's happening when we're reading in this test when the students were reading in the FMR machine natalie phillips lead author of the study hypothesized that they'd have increased blood flow to the areas of their brain responsible for language processing and they did what she couldn't predict is that they'd have increased global blood flow with blood flowing to areas of the brain that had nothing to do with language processing say you're reading a book in which a character is running through the woods well you would expect the temporal lobe the language processing center of the brain to light up and it does but so does the frontal lobes motor cortex the area of the brain responsible for coordinating the body events and it lights up in the same way it would as if you were actually running say you're reading a book in which the protagonist smells lavender or vanilla or coffee again you would expect the temporal lobe to light up and it does but so does the olfactory bulb and it lights up in the same way it would as if you were actually smelling those scents this doesn't happen with fact-based nonfiction it doesn't happen with movie reviews political journalism Ikea bookcase assembly manuals that manual might result in a cool bookcase but if you want to light up your brain like fireworks on the fourth of July stock that bookcase with Jane Austen is it all in our heads is there any practical application for the increased brain connectivity that reading induces what if I told you that thinking through a protagonist action could make you less racist this is what Dan Johnson proved and his study that looks at how reading affects bias he used the novel saffron dreams a novel written from the point of view of a Muslim American woman and he divided the study participants up into two groups the first group was given a three thousand word excerpt of saffron dreams in which this Muslim American woman was the object of racial prejudice this second group got a 500 word synopsis of that excerpt so this synopsis maintained all the facts but it left out all the sensory imagery and metaphors and rich interior life of the character the stuff that really makes a novel come alive afterwards the study participants were presented with faces of ambiguous Arab Caucasians some of those faces appeared angry and the study participants were asked to identify the race of the people in the photograph those who'd read that shorter 500 word synopsis were disproportionately likely to characterize the angry faces as Arab this racial bias was absent among those who dread the lush transporting excerpt children too can improve their opinions about stigmatized groups through reading and this was proven in a study that used Harry Potter this was done in Italy where immigrants are a stigmatized group so the children were divided into two groups the control group read the passage in which Harry gets his wand and the other group read a passage in which shockingly blond pureblood Draco Malfoy is rude to Hermione Anna calls her a filthy little mudblood one week later the children's attitudes were assessed and those who'd read the passage dealing with racial prejudice had improved attitudes towards immigrants again I think of the students who come to visit me and my office and the English department wanting maybe to be an English major but wanting to be successful well if what they mean by successful is the highest guaranteed starting salary maybe I do need to point them to the slightly bigger and more robust columns of Business Administration but if what they're talking about is helping to create a more harmonious worlds pull up a chair some people play fantasy football I like to play fantasy fiction seminar and my draft picks are those most in need of the enhanced brain connectivity that reading induces namely world leaders and policy makers imagine if before initiating aggressive military action that leader had to read a novel from the point of view of an enemy combatant imagine if before slashing social services that Legislature had to inhabit the interior life of a welfare queen imagine if before setting a prison sentence or immigration policy that politician had to pass my midterm I've been talking about the wave reading educates us emotionally cognitively and spiritually but I want to end with what it does for us hedonistic aliy don't just read because it's good for you read because it's good it tastes good to suck a novel sweet juice and reading not only helps us feel it helps us feel that reading makes us less lonely we can find our own stories and books James Baldwin wrote you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world and then you read we could start today we could go home and turn off the phone and turn on a book we could lose ourselves which is to say find ourselves and find everybody else while we're at it and I'll let you in on a little secrets but don't tell the incoming students you don't even need to be an English major but if you happen to be considering it you know where to find me my office in the English department or maybe outside on a park bench you know the kind that can support a family of four or just one English major thank you very much you [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 168,563

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Emotions, Intelligence, Learning, Literature, Neuroscience

Id: 9nJv8sxpUKU

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020