{"id":1429,"date":"2026-06-01T00:24:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/?p=1429"},"modified":"2026-05-31T10:32:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T14:32:22","slug":"literature-makes-you-a-better-thinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/?p=1429","title":{"rendered":"Literature Improves Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"little-girl-reading-book\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It\u2019s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making.<\/p>\n

Fortunately,\u00a0new research<\/a>\u00a0suggests a simple antidote for this affliction: Read more literary fiction.<\/p>\n

A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist\u00a0Maja Djikic<\/a>, report that people who have just read a short story have less need for what psychologists call \u201ccognitive closure.\u201d Compared with peers who have just read an essay, they expressed more comfort with disorder and uncertainty\u2014attitudes that allow for both sophisticated thinking and greater creativity.<\/p>\n

\u201cExposure to literature,\u201d the researchers write in the\u00a0Creativity Research Journal,<\/i>\u00a0\u201cmay offer a (way for people) to become more likely to open their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Djikic and her colleagues describe an experiment featuring 100 University of Toronto students. After arriving at the lab and providing some personal information, the students read either one of eight short stories or one of eight essays. The fictional stories were by authors including Wallace Stegner, Jean Stafford, and Paul Bowles; the non-fiction essays were by equally illustrious writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Stephen Jay Gould.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, each participant filled out a survey measuring their emotional need for certainty and stability. They expressed their agreement or disagreement with such statements as \u201cI don\u2019t like situations that are uncertain\u201d and \u201cI dislike questions that can be answered in many different ways.\u201dThose who read a short story had significantly lower scores on that test than those who read an essay. Specifically, they expressed less need for order and more comfort with ambiguity. This effect was particularly pronounced among those who reported being frequent readers of either fiction or non-fiction.<\/p>\n

So how does literature induce this ease with the unknown? Djikic and her colleagues, Keith Oatley and Mihnea Moldoveanu, have some ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thinking a person engages in while reading fiction does not necessarily lead him or her to a decision,\u201d they note. This, they observe, decreases the reader\u2019s need to come to a definitive conclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurthermore,\u201d they add, \u201cwhile reading, the reader can simulate the thinking styles even of people he or she might personally dislike. One can think along and even feel along with Humbert Humbert in\u00a0Lolita<\/a>,<\/i>\u00a0no matter how offensive one finds this character. This double release\u2014of thinking through events without concerns for urgency and permanence, and thinking in ways that are different than one\u2019s own\u2014may produce effects of opening the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers have no idea how long this effect might last. But their discovery that it is stronger in frequent readers suggests such people may gradually become programmed to respond in this way. \u201cIt is likely that only when experiences of this kind accumulate to reach some critical mass would they lead to long-term changes of meta-cognitive habits,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n

Their results should give people \u201cpause to think about the effect of current cutbacks of education in the arts and humanities,\u201d Djikic and her colleagues add. After all, they note, while success in most fields demands the sort of knowledge gained by reading non-fiction, it also \u201crequires people to become insightful about others and their perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

If their conclusions are correct, that all-important knowledge can be gained by immersing yourself in a work of literature. There\u2019s no antidote to black-or-white thinking like reading \u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This piece originally appeared on pacific standard and was written by tom jacobs.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It\u2019s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making. Fortunately,\u00a0new research\u00a0suggests a simple antidote for this affliction: Read more literary … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[116,117,118,119,120,121,109,122],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-informative","category-instructive","tag-ambiguity","tag-critical","tag-fiction","tag-literature","tag-nonfiction","tag-prejudice","tag-research-2","tag-thinking","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6904,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/6904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bentonenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}