I haven't read the article, but I read the abstract, and am startled that it seems like a correlational study.
Do they do anything to differentiate "reading fiction increases empathy" from "empathic people read more fiction"?
I haven't really read it in detail, but in the abstract, see the sentence:
In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled for, along with two other important individual differences:the tendency to be drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting the tendency to be drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting.
Which means that fiction was still predictive after accounting for various self-reported personality traits. So they did try t...
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