Shane Parrish’s answer to What are the advantages of reading novels?

Shane Parrish‘s answer to:

Books: What are the advantages of reading novels?

I find many people reading novels like Notebook, P.S. I Love You, Two States, Three Mistakes of my Life etc etc..
What are their advantages that people find out time to read them even in this busy world?
What is the impact on their psychology (incl. brain, memory, IQ etc.) ?

Shane Parrish, problem solver and editor of farnamstreetblog.com

Aristotle claimed that poetry, which at the time he meant the epics of Homer  and other tragedies, was better than history. Fiction over history because it tells us what is possible. Whereas, at best, history tells us only what has happened. Fiction stretches our imaginations and, in  doing so, opens a window into ourselves and others.
Readers of fiction score higher on tests of empathy and social reasoning. In addition to this we become part of the story. Keith Oatley, professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, says “fiction at its best isn’t just enjoyable. It measurably enhances our  abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something  larger than ourselves.“
Two researchers, Gabriel and Young, in the journal of Psychological  Science, found that participants who read Harry Potter self-identify as  wizards. Participants, on the other hand, reading Twilight self-identify  as vampires. We become part of the story. Surprisingly, belonging to  these fictional communities provided the same life satisfaction people  get from affiliations with real life groups. “The current research  suggests that books give readers more than an opportunity to tune out  and submerge themselves in fantasy worlds. Books provide the opportunity  for social connection and the blissful calm that comes from becoming a  part of something larger than oneself for a precious, fleeting moment,”  Gabriel and Young write.
Fiction also shapes our mind.
From Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal:

Research results have been consistent and robust: fiction  does mold our minds. Story—whether delivered through films, books, or  video games—teaches us facts about the world; influences our moral  logic; and marks us with fears, hopes, and anxieties that alter our  behavior, perhaps even our personalities. Research shows that story is  constantly nibbling and kneading us, shaping our minds without our  knowledge or consent. The more deeply we are cast under story’s spell,  the more potent its influence.

…

stories make societies work better by encouraging us to  behave ethically. As with sacred myths, ordinary stories — from TV shows  to fairy tales — steep us all in the same powerful norms and values.  They relentlessly stigmatize antisocial behavior and just as  relentlessly celebrate prosocial behavior. We learn by association that  if we are more like protagonists, we will be more apt to reap the  typical rewards of protagonists (for instance, love, social advancement,  and other happy endings) and less likely to reap the rewards of  antagonists (for instance, death and disastrous loss of social  standing).

Yet another reason to read fiction is because it helps us deal with uncertainty. Here is an example from Antigone. It is Incredibly interesting to view literature through the lens of decision making.
We’re largely ignorant, that is, we operate in a state of the world  where some possible outcomes are unknown. However, we’ve prepared for a  world where outcomes and probabilities can be estimated. There is a  mis-match between our training and reality. You can’t even hope to  accurately estimate probabilities if the range of outcomes is unknown. Through literature we can study ignorance.
“Fortunately,” write Joy and Zeckhouser, “there is a group of highly  perceptive chroniclers of human decision-making who observe individuals  and follow their paths, often over years or decades. They are the  individuals who write fiction: plays, novels, and short stories  describing imagined events and people (or fictional characters.)”Joy and Zeckhouser argue these works have “deep insights” into the way we approach decisions, “both great and small.”
And fiction also lets you see inside people’s heads and hear their thoughts in a  way you can’t in real life.