Wimmer, Lena, Currie, Gregory Paul orcid.org/0000-0001-8364-997X, Friend, Stacie et al. (1 more author) (2021) Testing correlates of lifetime exposure to print fiction following a multi-method approach:evidence from young and older readers. Imagination, Cognition and Personality. pp. 54-86.
Abstract
Two pre-registered studies investigated associations of lifetime exposure to fiction, applying a battery of self-report, explicit and implicit indicators. Study 1 (N=150 university students) tested the relationships between exposure to fiction and social and moral cognitive abilities in a lab setting, using a correlational design. Results failed to reveal evidence for enhanced social or moral cognition with increasing lifetime exposure to narrative fiction. Study 2 followed a cross-sectional design and compared 50-80 year-old fiction experts (N=66), non-fiction experts (N=53), and infrequent readers (N=77) regarding social cognition, general knowledge, imaginability, and creativity in an online setting. Fiction experts outperformed the remaining groups regarding creativity, but not regarding social cognition or imaginability. In addition, both fiction and non-fiction experts demonstrated higher general knowledge than infrequent readers. Taken together, the present results do not support theories postulating benefits of narrative fiction for social cognition, but suggest that reading fiction may be associated with a specific gain in creativity, and that print (fiction or non-fiction) exposure has a general enhancement effect on world knowledge.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > Philosophy (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 01 Feb 2021 17:10 |
Last Modified: | 02 Apr 2025 23:20 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0276236621996244 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/0276236621996244 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:170656 |
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