What is it about?
Can reading stories help us understand other people better? We explored this question in two studies involving 903 people in Iran. We found that those who were more familiar with literary fiction tended to be better at recognizing what others might be thinking or feeling. We did not find the same connection with popular fiction.
Featured Image
Photo by National Gallery of Art on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Most studies on how reading fiction relates to understanding other people have been done in Western countries. We wanted to see if the same findings would apply in Iran, where literature has a long and rich history. To do this, we created a Persian version of the Author Recognition Test, which helps us understand how familiar people are with different types of fiction. Across two studies, we found that people who were more familiar with literary fiction tended to be better at understanding what others might be thinking or feeling. We didn't find the same connection with popular fiction. What makes this study important is that it shows how findings from Western countries may also apply to other cultures. It also gives researchers a new way to study reading habits in Persian-speaking communities.
Perspectives
One of the things I enjoyed most about this research was the chance to bring Persian literature into a field where most studies have focused on Western countries. I was curious to see whether the connection between reading fiction and understanding other people would also appear in Iran. I found it especially interesting that literary fiction and popular fiction showed different results. It made me think more about how the kinds of stories we engage with might relate to the way we understand others. I'm also happy that we developed a tool specifically for the Persian literary context. I hope other researchers will find it useful and that our study encourages more research in different languages and cultures. More than anything, I hope this work makes people a little more curious about the relationship between reading stories and understanding the people around us.
Danyal Tohidi
Allameh Tabatabai University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Persian Author Recognition Test: Exposure to literary and popular fiction differently predicts theory of mind., Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts, May 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/aca0000867.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
